Doing a Twitter Q+A with @FutureLearn @arosha and @doctorow ....

Always up for new experiences, new ideas and a different way of reaching out. Today culminated in an interesting experience, involving a Q+A session via twitter.

To put it in perspective, I need to state that I was the side show. With +Arosha Bandara and Cory Doctorow being the prime protagonists. Nevertheless, with three 'experts', support from the team at +FutureLearn it was a busy hour fielding five questions and dealing with a visual deluge of tweets, replies, retweets, favourites and hashtags.

Having set myself up with hootsuite, tweetdeck and another twitter client. I could watch the interaction take place.
Two computers, three screens and plenty of coffee
Once the first question built up a little momentum, the time quickly passed. To be honest, one soul cannot see all conversations. Using one column for hashtags, another for mentions, I could see that some souls followed the rules using the tag. Others replied directly to oneself or one of the other accounts I had access to.

With Cory and Arosha in the fray; I am sure we missed some tweets and queries. Some were hilarious, others silly, a bit of trolling and some spam. But, within this sensible debate, discussion and good ideas. 

Some of the queries overlapped, this was manageable. You needed to type fast and cope with the scrolling screen.

Would I do this again ... yes, most certainly, as an engagement tool I think that educators should consider open social media discussions with their students. Not all will join, but some will and they do engage.

 

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