Educational Chats

This week, I participated in two educational chats, #iPadchat and #edchat. In general, it was nice to casually chat with people who are passionate about education and have all different connections to it. The two chats were vastly different though.
Edchat was so popular and the stream of information was moving so fast that it was hard to read the tweets. The topic was, "how do we know when our students are engaged?" I re-tweeted my favorite tweets, and added a couple of my own insights. Some common tweets included, "when students do not leave their seats when the bell rings" and "when they do not ask if the information is going to be on the test." I added that it is awesome when students quiet down their peers so that they can learn. At a few occasions, the chat started to get more deep by  people discussing how a teacher should be to make class engaging. A lot of people were re-tweeting the comment, "If we expect our students to be engaged, we (teachers) must be engaged." Something I found interesting and is often true is that teachers sometimes inhibit the engagement out of fear of how their class will look to administrators. In general, what I gained from this chat is that teachers being curious and active in classwork and lessons increase student engagement, and that can be best measured by talking to students to see what they are learning.
iPadchat was a lot less popular. I think maybe five people participated. However, I received a few great links, which I added to my Diigo bookmarks. So, from this chat, I increased my web presence and gained some resources.
Overall, it's fun to participate in educational chats on Twitter. The only occasional downfalls are that there aren't enough participants or it is overwhelming how many participants there are. The chats are great opportunities to increase one's PLC, learn something new, and reflect on what one knows and does already.