#ozftchat

It’s taken me a long time to dip my toes into the ocean of Twitter, but I’ve found it to be a really enriching place to go. I’ve had the opportunity to strike up lots of relationships and be exposed to lots of ideas that I wouldn’t have heard about if I stayed in my own little educational neighbourhood.

One of the greatest social structures that have emerged from Twitter are the scheduled chats. These are often run weekly (others run once a month), and see people gather to chat about a theme that’s related to their field. Naturally, I gravitate towards the teacher chats. Twitter isn’t the ideal medium for lengthy discussion of complex and nuanced issues, but that’s not what these are about. They are more like a teachmeet than a lecture: they cover a broad range of topics and connect a variety of people together, which then opens the door for further conversation later on.

I was very privileged to be the guest on #ozftchat a couple of weeks ago. Australian Family-Teacher Chat is hosted by the wonderful Jeannette James, and is exactly what it sounds like: a time for teachers and families to interact on questions and issues that affect them both (and there are lots of those). It’s a brilliant idea and a great way to open lines of communication that are more frequent and flexible than the annual parent-teacher interview.

As you might be able to imagine, I was brought in because the theme of this particular chat was mathematics. You can read a Storify of the chat here to see how it unfolded.

In preparation for the chat, I threw together a few quotes that communicated some of the key ideas I wanted to get across. Here they are:

If you’re into education at all, whether from the parent or teacher side (or both!), the @ozftchat account is definitely worth following!