Top Tips: What we learned from hosting by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture

On February 11, the PA Department of Agriculture (@PAAgriculture) hosted a #TeachAgChat on Careers in the Agriculture and Food Industry: The Role of #AgEdu.  It was a lively discussion with a variety of folks involved. 

PDA learned that we need to do more work with our agriculture education partners in talking about the connection between production agriculture and the broader food processing and food distribution system. 

Along the same lines, people in ag ed know quite a bit about the jobs in production agriculture but they are a little less knowledgeable about careers in the broader industry.  Farmers, veterinarians, and dairy herdsmen are critically important to agriculture production but so are machine operators, industrial maintenance technicians, and truck drivers for food processing. 

Finally, we learned again what we already know...that agriculture education has many resources for work-based learning.  It knows how to do it; we just need to work on applying it in a broader context.

February 11, 2016 - Careers in Agriculture and the Food Industry: The role of #AgEdu Hosted by PA Dept of Ag

Host: 

Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture (@PAAgriculture)

Guided by:

Scott J. Sheely, CWDP

Special Assistant for Workforce Development

Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture

Topic: 

Careers in Agriculture and the Food Industry: The role of #AgEdu

Storify Archive: 

https://storify.com/RCMcLean/teachagchat 

Questions:

#Q1: In #AgEdu, how can we help prepare students for a wide diversity of career pathways with different skill demands?

#Q2: Should #AgEdu be academic/college focused or careers/vocational focused?

#Q3: How do we get more ag and food employers engaged in #AgEdu?

#Q4: How do #SAEs provide a framework for #Work-Based Learning?

#Q5: Beyond #SAEs, what are other best practices of  #Work-Based Learning in  #AgEdu programming you do or have seen?

#Q6: As members of the #TeachAg community, do you feel prepared to provide ag and food career guidance to your students?

#Q7: What are some good career guidance resources that you use in #AgEdu?  Where are the gaps where you need more information?

Top 3 Hosting Tips from TAAE

Hey #TeachAgChat -ers! If you're here, you're most likely getting ready to host your own chat. We wish you the best of luck. Michael and I had a blast hosting in late January. We want to share our Top 3 Hosting Tips!

1. Promotion, promotion, promotion!: Infographics are a must for promotion. Data has shown that tweets and FB posts are more likely to be read when they contain a picture or infographic.  (We loved using Canva!) They also allow you more than 140 characters to get potential Tweeps excited about your upcoming #TeachAgChat. Also, consider that many people do not use Twitter as frequently, so cross-promote across various social media platforms. Be willing to share how a Twitter chat works with the less experienced educators. You may be the bridge into this new experience for them!
2. Be Quick on the Draw: The actual event is very fast-paced. One hour is not much time for 8-9 #TeachAgChat questions. In fact, we only posted 6 questions for our chat, and it still felt very rushed. It is very important to structure your questions with a time limit in mind. Some Q’s require more time than others. You should also remind people constantly to respond with the proper Twitter chat format (A# and #TeachAgChat) in their post so that things can be easily followed and archived well.
3. Practice Makes Perfect: Practice before you host. It is very important to participate in a few Twitter Chats before your big night of hosting #TeachAgChat A great one to visit is #AgChat every Tuesday night. Also, since you know the prompts ahead of time, prepare your answers and just paste them into Twitter the night of, so you can spend more time introducing new members and helping with the flow of the chat. In the same vein, make sure to get your prompts to your experts as early as possible so they are free to gather resources.

Bonus Tip: Use the manual Dr. Foster and his students developed! It has great suggestions for a host, but also basic information that you could share with teachers who want to participate but don't know how or even what a Twitter chat is. Information for all levels of experience!

We'd love to connect with you! (@jlumpffa and @tnagteacher) Thanks to Dr. Foster for allowing the Tennessee Association of Agriculture Educators host. To all future hosts, we'll see you in the chat!

-Jessie Lumpkins and Michael Shirley