#Oneword at #sunchat: Top Tweet for January 2015

Reflection is a powerful tool- one that goes unwielded so often in the flurry of planning and doing that generally fills our busy days. I noticed that if I wanted to spend time harnessing that power, I would need to develop purposeful structures that would help to cause it to happen. To that end, I’m experimenting with this “Top Tweets” series.

Following the reflection gained by looking back at a year’s worth of tweets in 2014, I thought it might be interesting and helpful to increase the frequency of those reflections, to go back on a monthly basis and expanding on the ideas of the “top tweets” of each month. While the depth of “A Year In Review” can resurrect powerful ideas, I think I’d much prefer keeping these ideas at the forefront of my mind much more frequently.

Here is January’s top tweet:

#oneword Tagxedo for #sunchat – 1/4/15

Here's what each of us said our #oneword for 2015 would be during 1/4's #sunchat (note: may not be comprehensive) pic.twitter.com/69NpK34vJh

— Tony Borash (@tborash) January 4, 2015

Most every Sunday morning at 9AM ET, a group of passionate educators come together for #sunchat, a free-form educational chat moderated by New York educator Starr Sackstein. Ultimately inspired by the book One Word To Change Your Life (though more likely by the twitter zeitgeist, which was #oneword-ing all over the place at the time), Starr challenged each of us to choose and commit to one word that we hoped would embody the year to come, and to share it during the first #sunchat on 1/4/15 along with the hashtag #oneword:

What's you're #oneword for 2015? Please share it here join #sunchat tomorrow at 9am ET to discuss http://t.co/k7caLNYKN9

— Starr Sackstein, (she/her) (@mssackstein) January 3, 2015

I find these types of chats to be extremely energizing- especially those focused on springing forward into a new year. In the hour that followed, educators from around the world inspired me with their drive and enthusiasm around the practice of teaching and learning. By the end, I didn’t want it to stop, though I knew that it would have to if we were ever going to make our #oneword become reality.

Seeing the collection of tweets, I remembered a couple of different approaches to using word cloud generators as an artifact of learning, which I thought might be interesting to capture our #oneword posts. Thankfully, #sunchat is always full of motivational energy:

Do it! RT @tborash: @KyleneBeers @Dr_LMR Could be a cool addition to import the #oneword responses into Wordle to visualize #sunchat

— Connie Hamilton, Author/Consultant (she/her) (@conniehamilton) January 4, 2015

And so, the Tagxedo image of our #oneword discussion on #sunchat was born. PS If you’ve not used Tagxedo before, I’d recommend it- a word cloud generator similar in nature to Wordle, but with the added functionality of allowing you to customize more of the features (including the shape).

Side note: The #oneword strategy itself has been a rejuvenating one, both for me and for those with whom I work. My #oneword during this #sunchat was “reawaken,” which helps me remind myself that each day is a gift I need to embrace, and that there is a larger world outside of the short-term goals that govern my day-to-day life that I need to see. When I shared it, one chatter asked, “Have you been asleep?” My response: “In a metaphorical sense, I think maybe I have been.” Here’s to waking up in 2015!

How To: Curate a List of Your Year’s Top Tweets

Every year around the winter break, I seek to stop and pause, reflecting on a year that seems to have flown by even faster than the last. This year, I decided to do so by looking back at tweets. So much of the power of twitter is its “right now” immediacy that it’s easy to forget how looking at past tweets can remind us of what we have learned over the course of the year.

So I went back and remembered, collecting the tweets along with the memories around them in this Storify of my Top 14 Tweets of 2014. And with just a few easy steps, you can make a list of your own! There are probably easier automated ways to accomplish a similar task, but I prefer a certain level of customization in the process, or else for me it’s not quite reflection.

Here’s how I made mine:

1. Make the place where you will curate your list. I used Storify because of the ease with which it integrates tweets, links, and various other media from around the web. It’s pretty easy to use- click “New Story” and you’re ready to get started!

2. Find your top tweets. I used favstar‘s “Best Of” feature to find my most faved & retweeted tweets. While there are several other tools that do something similar, I found the favstar’s quick clicking when showing Favs & Retweets the easiest to use for this specific purpose. (Note: I’d recommend opening a new tab in your browser, with Storify in one tab and Favstar in another. This will make the process of curating tweets much easier.)

3. Find the URLs of those tweets. I did so by copying and pasting key strings of words from the tweets shown on favstar into the twitter search engine. Finding the original tweets helped me remember the context of each of these tweets, which was a fun trip down memory lane. More importantly, clicking on “Details” also brought up the specific URL of each tweet, which is important for the next step.

4. Add the tweet to your list. By copying and pasting the URL of the tweet into the “Embed URL” option on Storify’s wide array of media options, you will be given the option of embedding each of these tweets into your curated list of top tweets. It’s a little bit counter-intuitive, but the Embed URL option works much better in this instance than the Embed Tweet option because in my experience the twitter search engine on Storify only looks back 1 week into the past.

From there, add any flourishes, additional context, or memories that will help you remember the context of your learning long after 2014 has passed.

5. Publish and publicize your list. Once you’ve completed your list of top tweets, click Publish and it will be accessible to anyone on the web. What’s more, when connected with twitter you’re given the option to publicize the story on your tweet stream. I found that Notifying all of those who have been mentioned in these top tweets helped me to reconnect with some “tweeps” I hadn’t talked with in a while. Hopefully, they saw the shout-out as the “Thank You” it was intended to be.

So, to recap:

1. Make a new post using Storify.
2. Find a list of your top tweets using favstar.
3. Get the URL for each of your top tweets on twitter.
4. Embed the URL for each tweet into your Storify.
5. Publish and publicize your list using Storify’s connection to twitter.

I hope you find as much benefit to the reflective pause that comes from looking back at your year that I did. Happy holidays to everyone out there in the PLN that makes learning together so rewarding. Here’s to the great learning opportunities that 2015 will provide!

Striving for the Wisdom to Know the Difference

Each week (on Tuesdays around 7pm), I look forward to tuning into #edchat on Twitter, where educators around the world get together to “put their thoughts out there” on a common topic.  Tonight’s #edchat topic: “Where should we place our efforts for educational reform? What is most/least important?”  As much as I look forward to sharing my thoughts, I feel most interested in the opportunity to learn from what I hear – my intention is usually to take these tweeters’ disparate 140-character snippets and listen for the trends that emerge so as to help me learn.

Unfortunately, I left tonight’s #edchat feeling angry and frustrated, my back and shoulders tied in knots.  I had spent 2+ hours considering a myriad of posts that all addressed a different aspect of ed reform, most often focused on blaming ‘those responsible’ for propagating such a system.  Meanwhile, I spent my time with responses that kept a pretty common theme (edited to remove names & abbreviations in cases other than re-tweets):

• I took poetic license to make an I-statement RT @spedteacher: If students don’t pay attention, I must stop blaming them & start looking at what I’m doing
• It’s the only place to start- the only thing I have the power to change is me. 😉
• We are ‘them.’ We are a part of the system. If I wish the system to change, how will I change?…In other words, what will I do tomorrow as a response to what I’ve learned today?
• RT @pvil One big change is a teacher’s change- from shepherd to browser, from area specialist to education specialist
• It makes me think- “if not everyone spends time changing and adjusting from what they learn, and I feel as if it is a problem that they do not make this a habit, then what will I do differently tomorrow?”
• I agree, and note that changing how we view ourselves is not just the quickest way to reform, it’s the only way…as we are all members of the ed system. All each of us can change is our own response to our surroundings…with the hope that each change we undergo evokes an opportunity for a different response by those around us.

Exasperated at the discrepancy I felt between my own philosophy and that which I was hearing, I finally put down TweetDeck and took a moment to reflect in my now infamous Moleskine (my 4th since starting this job last June), writing a short narrative that in retrospect reminds me in concept of the Serenity Prayer: 

“I cannot change others.  I can only change my response to my environment.  If I don’t see the environment I wish to see, I must ask, ‘What in my response am I willing to change, and how do I think that change might affect my environment?’ If I decide that I am not willing to make that change in my own response, how do I let go?”

The irony of my frustration hit me like a ton of bricks, and simultaneously released the tension in my shoulders and back: I had to let go of my frustration in trying to change others’ thinking, shut down the computer for the night, and decide on a new response tomorrow.  

Sometimes, maybe we should all apply our own advice to others to our own practice…I bet we would get some interesting ideas for next steps.