The IEU’s Securing Our Future Conference held in May at the University of Technology, Sydney was a great success, with many of the participants describing the event in glowing terms. The IEU feels that this is a vitally important conversation to continue, and for this reason the conference was ‘live-tweeted’ by IEU officers and participants.
Twitter is popular among teachers as a way to share thoughts, ideas, frustrations and resources. Users communicate via tweets, which are 140 character snippets. Other users can follow their peers, or follow specific hashtags that refer to events. Popular hashtags in NSW at the moment are #qanda (referring to the ABC TV show) and #auspol (referring to Australian politics). In the past, TV shows have had their own specific hashtags, like #mkr for My Kitchen Rules.
Live tweeting is becoming more and more popular at conferences, and especially educational conferences. Live tweeting is when, while taking part in keynote presentations or workshops, participants tweet their thoughts about the event.
It’s sometimes also called ‘back-channelling’. It’s a way for participants to share what they feel are the important take-aways from the conference. The IEU tweeted about the Securing Our Future Conference using the hashtag #secure2015, and reached almost 5000 people over the course of two days, as well as generating more than 20,000 separate interactions.
If you want to find out more about what happened at the conference, or more about mentoring for early career teachers in general, then you can search Twitter for the hashtag #secure2015. The IEU has also collated some of the most popular tweets into a Storify (basically a curated list of tweets). You can access them below.
Storify of the conference day one: https://storify.com/keithheggart/securing-our-future-2015
Storify of the conference day two: https://storify.com/keithheggart/securing-our-future-2015-day-two