On Chatting, Proximity, and the Advantages of Pizza

Over the last several months, many districts in San Diego County have started regular Twitter chats. Inspired by them, and frustrated with my inability to keep up with huge fast-paced chats like California EdChat (#CAedchat), I gathered four other SDUHSD tweeters in May and we started #SDUHSDchat, on Tuesday nights from 8:00 to 8:30 Pacific Time.

Over the course of the year, we've had some well-attended chats and some not-so-well-attended. No matter who is there, the chat is entertaining and interesting (at least to me), but it seemed that we had a drop-off in participation in November and December. This is perhaps to be expected, as teachers were busy with holiday activities, and our chat schedule was irregular to say the least during that time. So I wanted to do something to increase interest and participation.

I had already had the idea of doing an in-person chat, with teachers who were unfamiliar with Twitter or with chats sitting in the room with Twitter veterans who could look over their shoulders and help them out in person. Then I saw that the Santee school district had done just that, but at a restaurant, as a social activity! The light bulb went on! #PizzaChat was born, at least in my head. (Thanks to Kristen Eveland, @keveland2, for the inspiration!)

Administrators as well as teachers came out to learn!

We would do our first #SDUHSDchat of 2015 as a #PizzaChat, using the promise of free food and free help to attract teachers! The next steps were to choose a time and a location. If we used an off-campus restaurant, the event would be more social and teachers could indulge in adult beverages. If we used a location at one of our school sites, we would have better computer and wi-fi access, and we wouldn't need any reservations or agreements with a restaurant. Holding the chat in mid-afternoon, right after school would be more convenient and would probably get better attendance; having it later (like 5:00 or 6:00) would be closer to dinner time and take better advantage of pizza. (Who wants a pizza dinner at 3:30?) In the end, we decided on earlier and on-site, and that turned out to be exactly the right decision.

SDUHSD teachers learn (or re-learn) using Twitter for professional connections.

As it happened, we ended up with about 15 teachers either brand-new to Twitter or who had signed up but never used their account. The conference room we chose was crowded, which was exactly what I was hoping for. (Others had suggested moving to the media center, but I thought that I'd much rather have a crowded small room than a relatively empty larger room.)
We had a chat with questions that were relatively silly, because the questions were not the point of this particular chat. The point was getting teachers familiar with the idea and the mechanics of building their PLNs.

OK, so we proved that we could draw people to our Twitter chat if we fed them pizza. The real test, however, would be the next week. How many of these teachers would return to our Tuesday night chat if it was, as I put it, "BYOP (Bring Your Own Pizza)"? The answer was gratifying. Our chat on the following Tuesday was better attended than almost any of our previous chats.

What were my take-away lessons from this?

Who knew chatting was such serious business?

1. Twitter chats don't have to be serious, high-minded, or deeply philosophical. My questions were silly, but slightly thought-provoking. I was inspired by #WeirdEd chat, started and moderated, appropriately enough, by @TheWeirdTeacher.
2. Proximity means a lot. Being physically present in the room, and able to answer teachers' questions by looking over their shoulder and pointing at the screen, is for many teachers a thousand times more effective than any explanation by email or phone or social media.
3. Teachers will come out for pizza. Doesn't matter what else is happening.
4. Once we get teachers started on Twitter, they recognize what a valuable resource it is, chats or no. I commented to my officemates that I thought it was cool that part of my job was to eat pizza and tweet, but it's not as trivial as it sounds. One of my goals this year is to help teachers build their PLNs, and using Twitter is the single best way I have found to do that.

Special thanks to Bjorn Paige (@bjornpaige) for the use of the Diegueno conference room and the photos in this post. Also thanks to Lori Meyer (@meyerteacher), Mark Van Over (@APMarkVanOver), and Michelle Anderson (@mathmama) for helping moderate #SDUHSDchat. Look for us on Tuesday nights at 8:00 PT!