I have attended several educational Twitter Chats in the past. I decided to host my own. My schedule is so unpredictable at the moment that I am not sure that I will be available online when I want the Twitter Chat to occur. So, I am planning an “unattended” Educational Twitter Chat. Hopefully, I will be there to participate, but this allows me to do this without a moderator. Here is the process:
- Set up Slides for the Chat. Get the template here.
- Use the template and modify it with your Twitter Chat information.
- You can download each slide individually as a .jpg or .png (save this in a folder on your computer for ease of access when you want to start your Twitter Chat). If you have access to PowerPoint, download to a PowerPoint. Open up the Twitter Chat in PowerPoint, then select File/Save As — indicate .png or .jpg. It will then ask you if you want to save one or all of the slides — Select All. It will place all of your slides as individual pictures in a folder.
- Schedule your Twitter Chat. Using Tweetdeck. (formerly, I used Twittimer – free account allows you to do 10 scheduled posts) schedule to send out your tweets of your Twitter Chat Slides: The following is a suggested time schedule:
- 1 week before chat — send out announcement
- 3 days before the chat — send out reminder
- 1 hour before the chat — send out the hour reminder
- time chat is to begin — send out welcome followed immediately by introductions
- After 5 minutes (determine this on how many people you think will attend), send out 1st question
- Schedule to send out the rest of questions at regular intervals 10 minutes or less apart (again, based upon how many people you think might answer).
- Send out final thank you.
- Don’t forget to check back to see if anyone has replied late or after the live chat was done.
These steps allow you to concentrate on the chat itself if you are not fortunate enough to have a moderator.