San Antonio
As throngs of educators descended on the conference here last week, they shared their impressions via a favorite social platform: Twitter.
The event generated more than 207,000 tweets as of July 5, with about 9,600 teachers and 2,000 instructional technology specialists being those most likely to express themselves via the social media platform. That鈥檚 according to research shared by Hamish Kennedy, the CEO of a company that is launching Smart Penguin, which creates Twitter analytics for education.
Kennedy came up with the idea of analyzing tweets to connect more directly with the educators who might be interested in his formative assessment app, Spiral, which is a U.K.-based company. He brought both Spiral and the beta of his Twitter analytics platform with him to ISTE 2017, and turned that platform loose at the show to test it out and see who was talking about what on Twitter.
The ISTE 鈥渢weet-analyzer鈥� unearthed some interesting insights, including a breakdown of the topics that were commented on most often by the ISTE-attending educators. Those topics were:
- Constructivist learning/maker movement;
- Assessment/evaluation/standards;
- Communication and collaboration;
- Augmented and virtual reality.
For teachers, storytelling and multimedia hit the high mark of being mentioned in nearly 500 tweets, the Smart Penguin analyzer indicated. 鈥淥nline tools and resources鈥� were mentioned in 338. Here鈥檚 one educator鈥檚 online comment from the conference.
What does being an innovative educator mean to you? 馃惥
鈥� Lacey (@teacherlace)
Twitter analytics indicated that 654 educator ambassadors were active on the platform. Some of them were tweeting about the products that they are championing. The most active tweeter in this segment was Barb Meredith, a.k.a. @MrsBAMscience, who was the ambassador for more than one product:
Loved meeting this cutie today! Her zeal for fun ways to reach kids made my day!
鈥� Barb Meredith (@MrsBAMscience)
The top 5 job titles of educators tweeting鈥攄etermined by frequency of tweets鈥攚ere in the following areas:
- Instructional technologists
- Math
- Music
- Science
- Other STEM/STEAM teachers
Here鈥檚 an example from one of those science teachers: Kristen Austion, who is earning a masters in instructional technology:
I entered the room clueless and left with a plan!
鈥� Kristen Austion (@KristenAustion)
The tweeters also shared 鈥渓essons learned鈥� from the conference, and made it clear they were having a lot of fun online:
How you know that it鈥檚 been a good day!
鈥� Traci (@TechyTraci)
See also: