What happens when technology does not work the way we
planned? Tonight, I had one of my Twitter chats, moderating that usually goes
on without a hitch, decided to take a nose dive. Many people couldn’t see the
questions. Several others were seeing Tweets delayed. On the chat feed, #stucentclass,
as far as I could see, it looked as if everything was normal but then Tweets
began to not send, I began to see the Tweets of participants asking where the
questions were and where I was, they were not seeing any of my posts. So obviously
things were amiss. But lucky for me, people went to my feed to find the
questions, many of my friends began to retweet the questions and those didn’t
reach the feed and then they were copying the pictures and creating different
Tweets to get them to reach the feed. It was very stressful. I have been in
several Twitter chats where I could not see the questions and people had to
retweet and I had to go to the moderator’s page. So, I have seen it happen,
rarely, TweetDeck is usually very reliable, but tonight it happened to me.
As frantic as I was, I was literally retweeting, retweeting,
retweeting to no avail, but slowly it became a beautiful thing to watch as my
PLN banded together and helped the chat continue without interruption. My tribe
united and while a few disserted in frustration, most stayed and battled the
barrage of misfires. The Tweets finally arrived by several people Alana
Stanton, Erin Giblin, Krista Penrod and others sending them and then the
discussion picked up pace. I am so very lucky to have such great friends on
Twitter. I am also very relieved that I have been able to have both of my chats
on going for many weeks before this happened. So, my followers stuck in there
and I am so amazed at how much Twitter truly is a family. This could cause fear
and apprehension but because I have a growth mindset I look at this as a
hiccup, a learning experience. Stay mindful and calm and those around you, if
you are blessed, will come to your aid. I am blessed in so many ways, this is
for certain. But, from here on out, a better contingency plan. TweetDeck is
awesome but having the slides ready to Tweet on the computer, will be a good
way to set up next time.
In the classroom, these types of technology issues are bound
to happen and to me they often do. Having an open-mind, being able to laugh it
off, staying mindful and present and never ever giving up will get you through
anything. The kids will most often be able to solve any issues anyway. I ask my
students a lot for help when the tech goes awry. I expect it to happen. But,
tonight I was not expecting it and it threw me for a loop. But, I took deep
breaths, calmed myself down, focused on the goal- keep the chat flowing and
just relaxed. But I could not have pulled it off without my tribe. Thank you to
everyone who came, endured and persisted and answered the questions. Thank you
to everyone for being patient. Finally, thank you friends for being supportive
and mindful and stepping up to help me in my time of need. So, when anyone
tells you Twitter is full of haters and negativity, you can say, maybe, but more
often than not, you will find you have a PLN which is a tribe of friends and
they will do whatever it takes to make sure we are all successful in our
professional endeavors.
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