So, a little more about last week’s Twitter chat…

Librarian Colleen Graves has written about the chat from her perspective. Here’s a bit of that —

I loved, loved, loved being able to take teachable moments while Chris was typing to talk with students about what he was saying. At one point, the students asked Chris, “What do you do when you don’t know what to write?” To which he so eloquently said, “Pay attention to what you can’t stop thinking of.” So while he was typing up his next response, I told the kids, “What great advice! Think back to your research, what was something you learned that you can’t stop thinking of?

— but I think her entire post is worth your while, especially if you’re a librarian or educator and think you might be interested in doing this with your own students.

From my own perspective, here’s what I told Colleen afterwards (pieced together and lightly edited from a series of private messages I sent her via — what else? — Twitter):

My thoughts on our chat: It was a lot of work! In our standard presentations, we authors can more or less stick to a script. Not here!

And I don’t mean “a lot of work” in a negative way. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. But it called for constant engagement and thought.

It had a big advantage over the Q&A sessions with an in-person audience: I knew that each question you chose to include was widely relevant.

The challenge for me was in distilling my answers into 140 characters but also in having to decide for myself when I’d sufficiently answered.

We didn’t have the immediate, glazed-eyes feedback loop that you get in person when an answer is going down the wrong track.

But then, that’s what follow-up questions are for, right?

Following up on my “widely relevant” remark above: You never know if the kid who asks a question in person is the ONLY one who wants it answered.

As for structure, I think it worked out great having main questions come from you and visual questions from students on different account.

I don’t think I could have stayed on top of questions from more than two accounts, and having the visual from students reinforced the fact that it was the kids doing the asking so that I could keep them in mind as I answered.

As for attempting a chat between a classroom and multiple authors simultaneously, I’d recommend against it, unless it’s two authors or an author and an illustrator who collaborated on a project. In that case, I can see how their comments would complement each other. Otherwise, I think it would be cacophonous for authors and students alike.

This chat was an experiment for Colleen and me alike, and I’m extremely happy with the results. So happy, in fact, that I’m henceforth adding Twitter chats to my school-visit offerings.

If you think you might be interested in scheduling one for me and your students, just drop me a line!