I just finished an interesting, new (to me) professional learning format. And I can’t wait to try my next book study in this slow chat format!

ISTE’s Ed Tech Coaches Network hosted a Spring book study April 4 – May 20th on Twitter. The chat was a day-long chat (8ish to 8ish) and was searchable by following the #ETCoaches hashtag, I kept the Tweetdeck column up and running daily.

ISTE Spring 2016 Book Study Schedule

The shared document was advertised daily and included: a link to the free e-book, breakdown of the (week)day questions for discussion, and you could opt-in to a list of participants so that others could follow you and you could follow them – as other #ETCoaches with a common interest. During the chat the administrators of the group added a shared page for resources we wanted to share with each other in a more static place. When the chat organizers were so responsive I realized this was going to be good!

Each week examined one chapter in the book Effective Digital Learning Environments by Jo Williamson, Ph.D. Each chapter examine one ISTE standard for coaches. The book also gives detailed scenarios of a coach as Approaching, Meeting, and Exceeding at the end of each chapter.

I moderated three days. The chat organizers communicated to the moderators a variety of resources weekly. Each week was a new chapter and pulled some questions from the text and moderators signed up for the questions about which they wanted to facilitate discussion.

In the middle of the chat a webinar with the author took place. This was a live event, with participants signing up to participate, and a live observer link, followed by the recording link for those not able to synchronously join.

Book Study Schedule and Slow Chat Archives: https://bit.ly/ETCoachesBook
Webinar Recording: https://bit.ly/2016BookWebinarRecording
Webinar Chat Transcript: https://bit.ly/1ZadPsh
Coaching Standards Resource Document: https://bit.ly/CoachingResources

The book study also provided a nice badge via email to participants after the conclusion of the chat.
#ETCoaches Book Study Badge

 

The book was made available to the #ETCoaches chat for free for the duration of the chat event. Currently you can purchase through Amazon:

My Personal Reflection:

Exploring the ISTE Coaching Standards that strengthen our coaching practices was powerful in a group of others exploring and creating our work field. It was a welcome, low-cost, effective way to make connections with those I might not see outside of the annual conference.

Fellow coaches in a nascent field (where even job titles are not uniform) makes connecting a degree more difficult. This helped introduce us and allow us to follow those who sparked our interest in their questions and responses. This was an excellent way to make some connections which I believe can serve both sides of the connection equalling well.

The format of the chat brought in more participants. It included those who lacked the skill set to process fast and furious in a one-hour chat, yet allowed those interested in a condensed chat experience that option as well. I look forward to learning more in this fashion in the future.