Connected Yet Not Connecting

Multiple Tweets Gradient flickr photo by mkhmarketing shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

Please don’t take this the wrong way. I love #IMMOOC. I am fed by the connections, the conversations, the creativity, the collaboration. But I just can’t do another #IMMOOC Twitter chat. I just handle it.

My friends Tara Martin and Katie Martin (aka, “The Martin Girls”) have done a fabulous job running the Wednesday Twitter chat for the past several weeks and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it…

Except for last week’s chat. It hit me about five minutes into the chat. I just couldn’t keep up. All I could do was wait for Katie’s Tweet with the next question and answer it. The Tweets were coming in so fast that I thought my Tweetdeck was going to explode — turns out there are about 3,000 Tweets tagged #IMMOOC during the 60-minute chat.

Let me go back to the beginning. Don’t get me wrong. I love #IMMOOC. But a chat about innovation and connections with 3,000 Tweets in 60 minutes seems counterintuitive. I liked about a dozen Tweets and replied to even less. I was never able to get in the groove of connecting with and learning from my PLN. Totally frustrating!

Round 2 of The Innovator’s Mindset MOOC has once again altered my sense of innovation and my roles and responsibilities as a connected educator and teacher leader. But parts of the “course” just became too big for me to manage. Will I participate in this week’s chat? Of course, because it’s the final one. Will I be overwhelmed? Certainly, but if I change my strategy and listen to what others are saying rather than trying to speak and listen at the same time, then maybe I’ll feel more connected.

If anyone has any ideas of how to filter and participate in large Twitter chats, I’d love to hear from you.

Originally published at buistbunch.wordpress.com on April 3, 2017.