Tonight I participated in a live chat on Twitter surrounding integrating Media Literacy with Social Studies education. This chat was lead by Renee Hobbs, author of Discovering Media Literacy: Teaching Digital Media and Popular Culture in Elementary School. I read this book last quarter and dove into teaching media literacy in my classroom. I’ve followed her on Twitter since then, and stumbled upon this chat.
I’ve never participated in a chat like this and I thought the topic was very fitting with the reading this week from Rheingold. Looking at bias in news, quotes and pictures taken out of context, and fake news stories from websites that aren’t credible. Renee Hobbs led the chat with questions surrounding social studies, and teachers kept coming back to these issues. This is what we’re facing in the world right now! News sources can’t be trusted anymore. Images can’t be trusted anymore. We are in an age that makes media literacy necessary to being an informed citizen. We need to teach these skills to students if they are going to fend for themselves in a sea of over-information.
Many of the teachers in the chat provided lesson plans, websites, and books to guide educators through teaching these skills. I can see why these chats are so beneficial! I feel like I’ve gained so much just from participating for an hour. I have multiple resources that I want to dig into more and I’ve found educators to follow. I also noticed as I was sharing my experiences that educators were following me on Twitter as well.
We are a community of educators and we are here to support each other in this world of ever-increasing teaching burdens and responsibilities.
Words To Teach By 
I was eavesdropping (and follow Renee) and loved seeing you pop up. How many people were on the chat? I couldn’t tell.
Any tips for other people about to do their first Twitter chat?
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I’m not sure how many people were there. I consistently saw about 10-15 names repeating, but many were “lurking” to gain resources and only shared that they were there at the end. Honestly, it was overwhelming so it was hard to keep up!
I would recommend paying attention to the format. I realized partway through that Renee Hobbs would post something like “Q3: ….” to start a new question and others were responding with “A3:…”. This kept the Tweets somewhat organized. I kept referencing back to her old Tweets to check the questions. I would also recommend opening and saving the links and resources people share before they’re lost in the Twitter current!
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People sometimes use a tool called “Storify” to archive most of the chat afterwards, but that takes some good volunteer time from someone. But it’s a good tool to add to the mix.
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