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:

May 5th- “Advancing Financial Literacy in #AgEdu with #SAE w/ @RogerHanagriff

Host:

AET, Texas A&M and Dr. Roger Hanagriff (@RogerHanagriff)

Topic:

Advancing Financial Literacy in #AgEdu with #SAE

Storify Archive:

Top Tips: Hosting a #TeachAgChat, by Curriculum for Agricultural Science Education (CASE)

Future #TeachAgChat Hosts:

CASE enjoyed hosting the #TeachAgChat on Using Inquiry-Based Learning to Elevate Learning in Your Classroom on April 21, 2016. We appreciated the wonderful conversations throughout the one-hour live event and were amazed by the total number of contributors! According to our hashtag review data, there were 95 tweeters who created over 500 original tweets!  When we added up the replies and retweets, there were over 800 total tweets! The #TeachAgChat total reach was over 28,000! We were stunned at the involvement and enjoyed hosting the #TeachAgChat.

Tips for Future Hosts:

1. Promote, Promote, Promote!
1. We used social media as the main way to tell people about the #TeachAgChat. We also shared the information about the chat in the Monday Morning Monitor and over US Agricultural Education and AAAE listservs. This is a great way to reach people who are interested about your topic, but may not follow on social media.
2. Be Visual
1. People like easy to read, quick information with images. There are a lot of “how-to” design types of resources online. Canva is a great website to create visual announcements, infographics, and social media images by using templates. It’s free!
3. Put people in a room together!
1. We hosted our twitter event during CASE Lead Teacher Orientation in Minneapolis. It was amazing to see people working together to create tweets. It elevated the energy in the room. Once they saw their tweets on TweetDeck, it encouraged them to participate more! We also provided a “how-to” participate guide for people who may not be as familiar with Twitter and/or TweetDeck to learn how to participate.

A few things we reflected upon after the #TeachAgChat:

1. We participated and watched #TeachAgChats prior to hosting the CASE chat to see what was working well. One thing we would like to improve upon for next year is using a hashtag reviewing website throughout the time we promoted the Twitter Chat event. This would help us see our promotion reach before the event.
2. We used Storify as a way to share the #TeachAgChat in review. It is a great way to share every tweet from the chat, some of which may have been missed by participants during the live Twitter event.
3. Get familiar with the hashtag impact data website you plan to use before the chat. Some sites have time constraints that can affect your results. Keyhole.co, Hashtracking.com and Hashtagify.me are three good sites to check out before your #TeachAgChat!

We really enjoyed participating in the #TeachAgChat! Good luck to future #TeachAgChat hosts and participants!

April 21st - Using Inquiry-Based Learning to Elevate Learning in Your Classroom w/ @Case4Learning

Host:

Curriculum for Agricultural Science Education (@case4learning)

Topic:

Using Inquiry-Based Learning to Elevate Learning in Your Classroom

Storify Archive:

Questions:

April 7th - Experiential Learning; Hosted by Iowa State AEE

Host:

Iowa State University 450 Farm Class (@ISUAg450Farm)
OP McCubbins (@opmcubbins)

Topic:

Application of Experiential Learning

Storify Archive:

https://storify.com/RCMcLean/teachagchat-engaging-in-experiential-learning?utm_campaign=website&utm_source=email&utm_medium=email 

Questions: