Top Tips: Hosting tips from Texas A&M & AET

Tips for an Ag Chat Session - Lessons from Texas A&M and The AET on Financial Literacy in SAEs

Use the following tips to make your session work.

#1. - Develop questions or areas you would like to cover, then break each one into smaller questions that cover the main point. Twitter sessions move fast and your space to respond is very limited. Breaking your ideas into smaller questions may help in developing shorter responses.

#2. - Be familiar with Twitter and Tweetdeck well before getting started. Tweetdeck is a great tool and essential for this session, so be sure to explore and even test before you actual session.

#3. - Dr. Foster has some great educational materials to get started, so be sure to also review these materials to get you prepared for the session.

#4. - Have references already open and prepared to use in links, which of course relate to your topics and questions. These materials of course need to be online to share, but also be prepared to use Google Shortener to have the URL address better formatted to link into Twitter.

#5. - Recruit and advertise to your contacts!  The sessions are in the evening and everyone is so busy that getting a large audience will be hard.  It sounds from previous experiences of others that connecting this session with a group or other meeting can help raise participation and value for the event.

So here are some ideas, see what you can do to have a great session and support the growth of agricultural education!

Top Tips: Hosting tips from Biotechnology: A World of Opportunity

Top Tips from Biotechnology: A World of Opportunity

We had a great on the 5/20 #TeachAgChat focusing on biotechnology education.  Really enjoyed being able to hear so many perspectives.  It is something we would definitely like to be a part of again.  

• As recommended in our advance planning, we contacted a number of different "experts" into the conversation.  
• I am glad that we contact plenty of folks - some of our experts didn't chat much during the #TeamAgChad (though they definitely enjoyed being a part of it - even just listening) and two had last minute schedule changes.  
• Based on input from past #TeamAgChat participants, I kept in touch with the experts and gave plenty of reminders.  I also mentioned them by name in Tweets leading up to the chat, thinking that might nudge them a bit more.
• We had a variety of experts, which I thought was very helpful.  
• We had three folks from 2 different Universities.
• Five industry leaders were involved, from a variety of areas within the seed industry.
• There were two high school instructors, one with a great deal of experience and one fairly new to biotechnology.
• There was one University professor that didn't Tweed - but he was sure to be an excellent resource.  So, he teamed up with another instructor who did Tweet and it worked well.
•  I wish that I could have done a better job of specifically calling out to those experts.  For example, when a specific question or comment came across, I would have liked to be able to direct that question a little better to a specific expert.
• Really glad that we used Hootsuite to schedule Tweets and TweetChat to follow the conversation during the Tweet. 
• I am echoing what NAAE noted in their blogspot:  "Pay close attention to the responses. The #TeachAgChat is a great learning tool for everyone involved. Make sure to have a follow-up plan for what you will do with the information you receive from the chat."  I did follow up with a number of people following the Chat.
• It took more times to prepare than I had initially expected, but enjoyed all of it - and felt that it went well when all was said and done.

Again, we really enjoyed the opportunity and feel that it was successful.  We didn't know quiet how we would measure success in this BUT we all agreed it was a success at the end!  See the full story at https://storify.com/biotech_edu/teachagchat.

May 19th - Biotechnology in #AgEdu: A world of opportunity w/ @Biotech_Edu

Host:

University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Department of Agronomy & Horticulture (@biotech_edu)

Topic:

Biotechnology in #AgEdu: A world of opportunity

Storify Archive: