#TeachAgChat Reflection

It was the day after Thanksgiving when I started thinking about the other assignments outside of lesson plans, units plans, and assessments that were due in the final leg of the semester. Oh yeah, the #TeachAgChat was just 6 days away!

After gathering some information, I decided to take on the lead and contact our given list of experts. I figured that they would have that weekend to check their email to confirm their attendance in our upcoming chat. Out of the 12 possible expert emails that I sent out, I heard back from five people; two of those denied the invitation to join our chat. I was thankful to hear back from Steve Brown, Cory Epler, and Ryan Foor from various parts of the U.S. that they were willing to share their expertise on our subject of "cultivating student dispositions for 21st century agriculture careers". A few days later, we had another expert confirming his attendance from the PA Farm Bureau, Scott Sheely. We had 4 experts, Great!

Now, our topic was a mouthful, certainly, so I did a bit of research on the topic over the weekend, and collaborated with my #TeachAgChat team, Kelsey Henry and Rachel Spicher, about how we should approach these questions and resources. We came up with 8 questions, but were still unsure if they were 'stellar', so I sought advise from Dr. Daniel Foster. Certain enough, he was able to point our group in the right direction on trying to make this a success. Once we had our question, I created the infographic (pictured to the right) to share it out to everyone wanting to attend.

After we had our questions, I sent a group message out for roles. We cannot have a decent Twitter chat without set roles for our moderators. Kelsey was set as our greeter and calling out to others as they answered questions. Rachel was to share our own resources for particular questions and follow up to others answers. I was to call out to others and in charge of running the @TeachAgPSU Twitter account.

Pretty soon it was December 3rd, and on December 3rd we ordered pizza. Now, when our group arrived to 214 Ferguson to conduct the chat, we were thrown off by how many people were there. The room was very crowded and I need my own bubble to work. After we were thrown into the room in the corner, we got our computers uploaded, poured ourselves a glass of soda, ate a slice of pizza, and pretty soon we were 10 minutes away.

I was very pleased that our experts made their appearance from the very first question and stuck with us through the very end. I cannot thank them enough for sharing some great input on our topic.Pretty soon, in a blink of an eye, it was over. We have over 50 people participate in our chat and over 500 tweets that went out over the course of that one hour.

This was an interesting experience was Twitter. Interested in seeing what went on during our chat? Check out our Storify HERE!