Earlier this month I attended the 18th Annual Sloan Consortium International Conference on Online Learning. When I checked in at the registration area, I was pleased to see an advertisement for a Twitter contest. The instructions were simple: the tweet using the conference hashtag (#aln12) that received the most retweets would be win the contest. Since I planned to tweet, I kept the flier. With nearly 3,000 people attending the conference, I didn’t think I would be a serious candidate for the top tweet. Surprisingly, I won! I made what would be come the winning tweet to share an idea put forth during the plenary session “Evolution or Revolution: What’s Happening with ‘Traditional’ Online Learning.”
So What?
As a first time attendee, I was appreciative of the many opportunities for networking. Some conversations began online and continued in person, others began in person and then moved online, while yet others happened either online or in person. I even opted to bring together in person several tweeters when I hosted a tweetup.
Given the parameters of the contest, I am humbled to receive recognition in the form of an award (and thankful the award comes with a prize: a free conference registration for one of three Sloan Consortium conferences in 2013).
As I think about the contest, I appreciate the creative way it encouraged the use of social media. How do you encourage the use of social media in your educational context? More specifically, how have you used Twitter in your teaching?