Join the Conversation

I will be giving a presentation this coming Saturday, February 18th from 10-11am Hong Kong time (which will be 6pm Friday on the west coast and 9pm Friday on the east coast in North America) at the 21st Century Learning Conference Hong Kong. Use this website if you are interested to see what time this event will take place in your corresponding time zone.

My presentation will center around the use of Twitter and blog use in the Early Years classroom. If you use Twitter, blogs, wiki’s, VoiceThread, Flickr, Vimeo, Audioboo, Photopeach, or have ever wanted to learn more about these great tools please join in the conversation!

My hope is that while I’m giving my presentation there will be a parallel conversation happening via Twitter. Participants can use the #kinderchat hashtag to join the conversation. Although I will be presenting, I see myself as a small part of an ongoing conversation. Please take this opportunity to tap into, as well as contribute to, the knowledge and experience of teachers all over the world. If nothing else pop in to see what everyone is talking about.

A quick explanation for those of you wondering why I’ll be using the #kinderchat hashtag. I began using Twitter professionally and quickly found my way to the #kinderchat phenomenon. The “little chat that could” has literally blown my teaching word apart… in a good way.(I will be blogging about this in more detail in the coming weeks.) Kinderchat serves as a sort of virtual hub for a network network of truly amazing teachers. I literally have experts in the field of education available to me at any time. Let me put it a different way… Imagine you were in the doctors office and the doctor was looking at something she wasn’t quite sure about. Let’s imagine she gathered the relevant information and sent it to doctors all over the world to ask their opinion… and got instantaneous feedback. That would be pretty cool. Well in a sense that is what you have available to you with #kinderchat… and I bet many of the other educational chats out there.

If you’ve never “done” Twitter and don’t know how don’t fret! There are some great posts explaining how to get started. You can check out the Kinderchat Blog which does a great job explaining how things work. I also wrote a couple posts about this a few weeks back. One is titled Twitter Lists Explained & Newbie Twitter Prezi” and the other is What’s a # mean on Twitter and what is a Twitter “Chat”?.

I believe that everyone has something of value to add to the conversation. Even if you just want to “listen” I guarantee it will be worth your while. So please join us on February 18th from 10-11am Hong Kong time. If you can’t make it to my presentation I still strongly suggest you check out any of the available educational Twitter chat groups. Here is a great list put together by Jerry Blumengarten- @cybraryman1.

I hope you can join us this weekend!