Tuesday, November 5, 2013

If You Build It They Will Come - LIterally!


About this time last year a group of Ohio educators collaborated on Twitter to start #OhEdChat, a weekly Twitterchat. This is a completely grassroots effort where topics are selected democratically, participants DM questions, and different educators volunteer to moderate the conversation each week. In fact, #OhEdChat is only sixty minutes long, but there are always a few hardcores continuing the famed #OhEdChatAfterParty conversation. A few of these same educators planned the first ever #OhEdChat Tweetup this summer at COSI with the support of @M_Bloom and StateImpact. Over thirty folks attended this event and even though @Dwight_Carter won Around The Horn, everyone walked away a winner. I’ve participated in #OhEdChat as both a moderator and a participant. In either case, I always felt challenged, inspired, and a better educator for the experience.


With my new career, I am often traveling and don’t get to attend #OhEdChat every Monday like I have in the past. Yesterday, I was excited to have the opportunity to attend #OhEdChat. I contacted a few friends and asked what the topic was only to see a sad tweet from @JR_Evans:

I was bummed. I promptly powered down for the night and enjoyed some family time with my son. Don’t get me wrong, I had a great time with my son (plus it’s not too often a 17-year-old is cool with hanging out with his mom).This morning I awoke to a flurry of texts from colleagues telling me about the greatest #OhEdChat ever. I missed a true Field of Dreams moment. You see, right after @JR_Evans layed down the #guilttrip, @mrwheeler rose to the occasion and tweeted:

I spent my morning reading through the tweets that happened on #OhEdChat open mic night and let me tell you the group did not fail to challenge and inspire. In fact, it looks like even open mic night flowed into an #OhEdChatAfterParty. What I learned from this experience is that when we build truly collaborative learning spaces where relationships matter, we are literally building the educational equivalent of the Field of Dreams. #OhEdChat didn’t need a moderator and clearly didn’t even need a topic to continue the learning and dialogue. The foundation had already been set with the participants valuing the contributions from one another, They had their learning space and they weren’t willing to give it up. What a contrast this is from my undergraduate days when we waited 5 minutes if a teaching assistant was late to class or 10 for a full professor before we bolted for something we were interested in. No, what #OhEdChat proved last night was that real collaboration and growth needs a teacher/leader to build a solid foundation and trust so that he or she can truly step aside from time to time and let the learners/participants take the lead role. You see the originators of #OhEdChat build it and the participants kept it alive and improved it. Instead of sitting in the stands and waiting to see whether Shoeless Joe or John Kinsella was going to step out and lead, the #OhEdChat participants were the ones who stepped out of the cornfield and up to the plate last night. In my mind, they hit a homerun!

Thanks to @mrwheeler, @tobyfisher, @yettereric, @jakramer2, @schufgb, @McLane_Ryan, @mr_rcollins, @brueckj23, @NLHSprincipal, and others for the stepping out of the corn last night.


_______

Picture from Flicker by Wednesday Elf - Mountainside Crochet

3 comments:

  1. OK, what was I doing wrong?

    When I got home and checked in ~9:50, there were only about 8 tweets!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not sure. I didn't check until this morning and I found pages to scroll through. Just think it's great that @mrwheeler recognized that #OhEdChat isn't an event, it's a community and that just doesn't stop. Did see a few tweet on credit flexibility in there. Thanks for reading my blog!

      Delete
  2. Awesome interpretation here Stacy. I was feeling guilty myself for not promoting things as well. The community stepped up and I was overwhelmed. I was sorry I missed it. Why didn't we think of this sooner? We will for sure have to do this again!

    ReplyDelete