I am certainly a procrastinator, but my long term memory is enviable.
This summer, I met the fabulous & talented Megan at the APME Conference in Denver. (I am hoping some of you start planning for next year's conference in Murfreesboro, TN, which bleeds over into the NAMM Summer Conference in Nashville. You have plenty of time to save up before June.) We decided we'd like to use our considerable social media savvy for the betterment of popular music education, so we started an Ed Chat.
If you're unfamiliar with Twitter or how Ed Chats work, they can be very confusing. I am an avid Twitter user and have been for years, mostly because that's where news happens. How many news stories put forth by outlets ranging from Buzzfeed to NPR to ABC News rely on tweets to tell a news story? If you're not using Twitter, it can be addictive & time-consuming, but also incredibly beneficial if used appropriately.
An Ed Chat is essentially what it sounds like: a designated moderator asks previously written questions, usually a set of about four to six, and the participants for the chat provide their own answers. All participants use an assigned #hashtag in order to keep track of responses. Typically, these chats are populated entirely by teachers or people in some way associated with education. They make for extremely productive use of time on social media, which I am all about. As an internet junkie since age 16, I know I'm going to use social media regardless; why not get the most out of my time spent scrolling on my phone?
Starting in late June, after the APME conference, Megan & I ran four #popmused chats. The first was almost too well "attended", the second less so, the third was just right on a Goldilocks level, and we seemed to run out of steam a little by the fourth chat. Regardless, we got a lot of people talking and by the third & fourth chats, the NAfME social media folks came calling, using the #popmused hashtag in their posts. It was pretty encouraging to see that conversation moving forward, and I hope we can continue it in the future.
Don't have time to explore everything categorized under that particular hashtag? I finally completed the Storify for our first #popmused chat -- the Debut Album, if you will. If you look below, you'll see that I attempted to distill much of the conversation we had into a single webpage. Imagine the highlights of a lecture discussion, in the participants' own words, at your disposal. All in all, Storify is kind of an amazing tool to recount discussion, and I am probably prouder of this particular "story" than I've any right to be.
Hopefully you find it helpful, too!