Adding value to a conference session via tweeting

May 1, 2010
colorado convention center, denver
Colorado convention center, Denver

I contend that tweeting from conference sessions adds value to any presentation or panel by bringing others into the conversation and by creating an online record for future reference.

I have been tweeting from the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) here in Denver. Today in particular I was gratified not only by the number of retweets but also by the number of original replies and added information.  After the session I told the organizers that the presentations were reaching more people than those who happened to be in the room.  They were delighted.

The session was titled “Barriers to equilibrium: Research supply and demand” and was organized by the AERA Research Use Special Interest Group. The audience consisted of researchers, practitioners, and communicators.

We used the hashtag #AERA and some of us were using the Tweetchat room  www.tweetchat.com/room/aera

I reproduce below my 18 tweets from the session and then the 19 retweets and comments that those tweets received in real time and afterward. Notice that some tweets were retweeted 3 times, greatly expanding their reach to all followers of each person tweeting.

First my tweets, then the responses.

How when & why teachers use research: 31.065 Learning Point Assocs. #Aera

http://www.curee.co.uk/ #Aera

How to empower Ts who access & use research? #Aera

What are some possibilities for engaging practitioners in data gathering? Some already do, and feel overwhelmed. #Aera

Research supporting practice in education www.oise.utoronto.ca/rspe #Aera

Knowledge brokers operate in the ‘white space’ of the broader ed system #Aera

Important to have a skilled facilitator, coach, cheerleader, who can span boundaries bet. worlds of practice & resch #Aera

In BC (Canada) professional learning communities are suspect & considered a threat to T autonomy. #Aera

Practitioners need help implementing research. Govt (in BC) not a trusted source of info. #Aera

Practitioners either still unaware of relevant resch or lack time to find and use it. #Aera

Best way to facilitate resch use: time for practitioners to collaborate w colleagues. #Aera

Scholarly reward system does not emphasize dissem to practitioners. Need for more open access. #Aera

Schools & districts shd create a library of ed resch. Ts will use resch under the right conditions. #Aera

Districts shd filter high quality for Ts, give structured time for using resch, #Aera

Teacher prep programs shd bring researchers and preservice Ts together, encourage Ts’ use of resch on the job. #Aera

Be clear abt context of study & applicability to other settings #Aera

Researchers shd promote work, use synopses, show applicability, give illustrations, write in accessible manner. #Aera

Barriers to Ts using resch: lack of time, articles overwhelming, controlled rsch settings not ‘real life’, may lack practical examples #Aera

Retweets and comments

Bonita DeAmicis bonitadee  @DrGarcia @doug_holton @pabaker55 Ed pract. tired of research promoted by $$-makers, too. Question bias in purpose + feels slimy. #aera

Doug Holton doug_holton @bonitadee @pabaker55 teachers value ideas that make sense-unfortunately sometimes they are not research based #aera

Greg McVerry jgmac1106  @bonitadee @pabaker55 #aera yes I hear it all the time from teachers “show me one study that says x and I will find one that says opposite.”

Bonita DeAmicis bonitadee  @pabaker55 + Ed practitioners don’t value research. They hear contradiction from yr to yr. Need ways to weed out junk quickly. #aera

Bonita DeAmicis bonitadee @pabaker55 + Ed practitioners don’t value research. They hear contradiction from yr to yr. Need ways to weed out junk quickly.

Bonita DeAmicis bonitadee  RT @jgmac1106: @pabaker55  I think any grant funded by IES should have to be published in open access journals.

Greg McVerry jgmac1106 @pabaker55 #Aera I think any grant funded by IES should have to be published in open access journals.

Rey Junco reyjunco  @jerridkruse @pabaker55 Thats why it’s incumbent on ed researchers to translate some of their findings to practice

Seann Dikkers sdikkers  @pabaker55 http://bit.ly/cbkQHo #Aera

Jerrid Kruse jerridkruse   @pabaker55 web 2.0 provides opportunity to connect research to practice. Ie: http://researchtopractice.wordpress.com

Jerrid Kruse jerridkruse  @pabaker55 that is not a dig against teachers, but against researchers who have lost sight of the goal #AERA

Jerrid Kruse jerridkruse  @pabaker55 in many ways research has become so esoteric, that practitioners can’t make use of it #AERA

Jerrid Kruse jerridkruse  @pabaker55 I don’t think is enough. Need to change higher ed expectations. Part of tenure should be demonstrates work with real schools.

Jerrid Kruse jerridkruse   @pabaker55 because of “publish or perish” philosophy, education researchers can only pay lip service to affecting real classrooms #AERA

Jerrid Kruse jerridkruse  @pabaker55 do we really wonder why there is disconnect b/w research & practice? Higher ed doesn’t value connecting the two. #AERA

Jerrid Kruse jerridkruse  YES!!! RT: Scholarly reward system does not emphasize dissem to practitioners. Need for more open access. #Aera /via @pabaker55

Jonathan Becker jonbecker @pabaker55 a-freakin-men. #AERA

Greg McVerry jgmac1106  @pabaker55 there are many barriers to schools accessing research. Cost and bad writing high list. #Aera

Dr. David D. Timony DrTimony YES! RT @pabaker55: Teacher prep programs shd bring researchers and preservice Ts together, encourage Ts’ use of resch on the job. #Aera

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Posted by paul baker

Education researchers seek to collaborate via new media

May 1, 2009

aero

The Ontario Educational Research Organization (AERO) is working with a government group (Ontario Educational Research Panel) to coordinate resources and build virtual spaces for education researchers to collaborate. The hope is to use new communication tools, including Twitter, to facilitate networking.

Chris Conley has set up @ResearchChat to “support educational researchers by posting events and resources and networking,” and asks whether any similar groups would like to coordinate resources.

Chris envisions educational research discussions akin to #educhat and #journchat and would like to hear from interested researchers or organizations. (For example, many people contributed to the #AERA Twitter stream at the recent annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association).

Chris says, “the possibility for international discussions are pretty exciting and could lead to some interesting collaborations in educational research.” I agree.

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Learning the Ropes: Public communication for researchers

April 17, 2009

The 2009 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association has drawn to a close, but for another day and a half 25 early career education researchers are still at work. They’re participating in an intensive workshop devoted to communicating research with the media.

Today the group heard from editors, reporters, and an influential researcher and public intellectual.

Before you continue reading my summary, please see the thoughtful post by participant Sara Goldrick-Rab, who goes out of her way to communicate effectively with the public and, in my opinion, serves as a model for how researchers can provide a valuable community service.

And see this post by my fellow panelist Reidar Mosvold on why he, as a mathematics researcher and educator, takes time out of his day to post to his blog.

Speakers  included Larry Gordon, the Los Angeles Times, who covers topics including college admissions, tuition, freshman performance, graduation rates, tuition, and measuring performance of charters.

Stephanie Banchero, Chicago Tribune, said that her paper does not write about research, qua research, i.e., don’t expect a press release to result in a big story. But the paper does use research findings to buttress or refute their stories, which tend to focus on the Chicago public school system.

Emily Alpert, Voice of San Diego, encouraged the early career researchers to consider what reaction do you want to provoke when submitting an Op-Ed piece.
It’s important also to make clear how one’s research relates to current events, or to a soccer mom. “Develop a ‘Cliff’s Notes’ summary of your specialty.”

Think tanks package their work very expertly, she said. They virtually write the story for you. Their press releases include directions: “Here is the nut paragraph,” and “here is contact information for 4 willing interview subjects. But we don’t see that in material released from universities.”

She notices a ‘schizophrenic’ attitude among universities when it comes to making faculty accessible to reporters. Some simply choose not to, while others distribute faculty guidebooks and even provide their home phone numbers. It varies from school to school.

Liz McMillen, Chronicle of Higher Ed, said there are many ways to organize an Op-Ed piece.
- The “everything you know is wrong!” approach,
- here is how to think differently about a problem.
In every case, though, make sure you show why the reader should care about your piece. Identify a problem, then offer your solution.
She discouraged Op-Ed writers from submitting the same piece to multiple publications at the same time.

Amy Stuart Wells, Teachers College, Columbia University, encouraged participants to find a news peg on which to hang the Op-Ed piece.
Demonstrate how you are an authority on the subject.
Show how your research interacts with a larger body of work.

Don’t write in academic jargon, she cautioned. “A couple days before writing your piece, don’t read any academic journals. Instead, read good popular journalism like you find in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, the NY Times, or Esquire. Analyze the cadence of the language, the voice, the sentence structure.”

Wells advised taking advantage of the news staff or PR staff in your college or university. Ask them to vet your piece, ask them to help you shop it around.
It’s good to develop a relationship with an editor. If someone accepts one of your pieces, keep working with that person.

Richard Colvin, Hechinger Institute, Columbia University, advised thinking broadly about the current news climate. Tie your research into the issues and themes people are broadly thinking about. Today’s issues for example would include the economy, income tax day, Somali pirates, and the anniversary of Columbine. For that matter, the anniversary of any important event can serve as a good news peg.

Linda Darling Hammond, Stanford University, was asked to speak about the role of the public intellectual. She said that a good public intellectual is someone who can translate their micro-level research into a broader set of systemic questions. Speaking out about your area of expertise is not an ego trip, she said; it’s about the public good.

She thinks of everything in terms of teaching, even when talking to politicians and policy makers. What does my audience already know? How can I connect with that? Who have they already spoken to? What can I build on?

Think how you can represent your work in terms of analogies and metaphors.

A public intellectual should have three main ideas to speak about. No more.

Timing is important. Watch the legislative calendar and agenda. Be prepared to give policymakers the information they need when they need it. The policy making timeline is very different from the academic timeline.

It’s OK to write an Op-Ed piece based on qualitative research. Qualitative research is credible if it is done impeccably. Qualitative research produces good stories, and lots of politics is driven by stories.

Policymaking follows two timelines simultaneously. There is the long arc of policy development and aggregating evidence (e.g., the global warming issue), but at the same time there’s the short-term, immediate process of getting bills passed.

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Riding the backchannel

April 15, 2009

downtown san diego

For a running commentary from the point of view of an average (albeit technologically skilled) person attending the AERA convention this week, you can go to the Twitter search page and follow the keyword AERA.

As an alternative, check the Wiki where the sidebar streams (a limited number of) live text messages.

If you have a twitter account, you can follow @AERAtweetup, as 155 already do, or you can just follow the hashtag #AERA.

Sample recent comments cover session contents, the quality of facilities, recommended places to eat:

Best Jim Gee quote of day: “School has gotten rid of the game, but it kept the manual.”

AERA filled with iPhones, am jealous. Going back to Marriott (Salon/Hall 3) for poster, tho am sad to give up wireless!

Great (albeit short) last second talk by Marc Lamont Hill on youth culture, new media, and Discourses of resistance.

Just taking AP classes do not predict college performance-Dick Atkinson

Virtual learning environments presented over 1.5 hours using straight (mostly bad) PPT + verbal presentation. Shocking/disappointing

Need to check out “Stages of Adoption Inventory”

Beach City Market has reasonably priced breakfast

i’m at the #aera new directions in learning & instruction session (39.025)… looks like it’s gonna be crowded bc room is tinyyyy.

Getting ready to present at AERA on using Acrobat to aggregate dissertation media.

Finished my stuff for AERA today…. good sessions tomorrow– too bad they are all scheduled at the same time.

AERA New media talk – C. Steinkuehler awesome! – relates to r study of youth & social media & cognitive renaissance & learning ecology

At AERA meeting lots of talk about research and stimilus package.

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2 reporters + 2 researchers = productive conversation

April 15, 2009

Education reporters and education researchers share overlapping interests and, although cooperation is good, there is much room for improvement.

That was the consensus of a panel Tuesday afternoon during the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA)  going on this week in San Diego.

In a session titled, ‘From Wedge Issues to Substantial Dialogue: Education Research in the Media’ each panelist offered tips on how to get most from a researcher-media relationship.

From left: Graue, Jaschik, Wells, Moran

From left: Graue, Jaschik, Wells, Moran

“I am filing 3 stories today,” said San Deigo Union-Tribune education reporter Chris Moran, as he portrayed how newspaper industry buyouts and layoffs are exerting lots of pressure on editors and reporters. ” I need story ideas that will provide a lot of  quick hits.”

It’s good for researchers to have an ‘elevator pitch’ or ‘sound bite,’ he said, and even after long conversations with a reporter, researchers should expect to see their work represented in a very focused, limited way.

“Anecdotes are powerful,” Moran said. “I can strike gold with them. I  often lead a story with an anecdote.”

Other tips:
Reporters at local dailies like to use local experts. Know about school districts in your area.

If you are one of the first people to talk to me for a story you will have more of a voice in shaping it.

Make story pitches and research timely. Tie to current news stories.

Beth Graue is professor of education at the U of Wisconsin School of Education and interim director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. She said that as she translates her work for reporters, she does better work and develops a clearer clear idea of her work.

“I try to develop sound bites that are simple enough to tell a story, but complex enough to cover the topic, and so those two exist in tension,” she said.

“I know that most reporters write stories that include quotes from parents and teachers as well as from researchers,” she said. “So when I interview I’m speaking on 3 levels at onece; to the reporter, to the reporter’s readers, and AROUND the other people he or she will probably quote.”

Graue has conducted several ‘reverse interviews.” Often she has spent an hour or 2 with a reporter about her research, but still the story has been wrong. So she has made a practice of interviewing the reporters about their writing. She has found that often a reporter writing about early childhood or kindergarten is writing a piece while trying to make an important family decision, so emotion is involved.

Reporters often ask her “How does one decide for an individual child?” And they often ask her what choices she has made for my own children.

Inside Higher Education’s Scott Jaschik (rhymes with classic) said “You guys should be up in arms that most people ignore what you do.”

He said education researchers should be getting more attention because their work is relevant and what they do matters.

But on the rare occasion when a newspaper runs a Page 1 story about research, it is usually about science research; very rarely about education research.

Jaschik recommended that when reporters ask the question “what are you working on?” researchers should be prepared to summarize their work with a single, simple declarative sentence.

“Know how to communicate WHAT MATTERS about your research,” he said. “I am amused when I go to conference presentations because researchers often spend most of their time talking about the study’s literature review and its methodology, but often run out of time before getting to their FINDINGS. Journalists want to know ‘why it matters.’”

As a good example of a publication that translates research findings into plain English he mentioned the magazine “Contexts” published by the American Sociological Association.  It’s written for a lay audience. It’s topical, and isn’t laden with footnotes.

Panelist Amy Stuart Wells of Teachers College, Columbia University, said that journalists and researchers should remember that they are helping to shape the public discourse and dialog.

“I think of education journalism and education research as two overlapping circles,” she said, and that it’s important for each to respect and have empathy for what the other does.

Reporters should know the researcher’s expertise, and researchers should know the reporter’s expertise.

Many interviews are conducted via email. But an important synergy takes place during live interviews and phone conversations, she said, as there is more room for give and take. “And our perspectives change. My best experiences have occurred when we make the time to talk live.”

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Twitter meetup in the works for AERA

March 10, 2009

AERAtweetup

Geekishly-inclined people planning to attend the April Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association are invited to join some of us for a Twitter meetup (time and date TBA). We will probably talk at some point about uses of social media in education research and in education communications. We have set up a Wiki and a Twitter stream.   #AERA

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The People Side of Education Reform

January 29, 2009

We’re expecting about 45 education leaders to spend a day with us here at WCER on 10 February. They direct the state’s Cooperative Educational Service Agencies (CESAs).

They will have Q&A with UW-Madison Chancellor Carolyn “Biddy” Martin and Prof. Adam Gamoran about the UW-Madison and the School of Education, respectively.

They’ll talk with Sarah Archibald, Value-Added Research Center, about doubling student performance and finding the resources to do it.

They’ll hear from Prof. Allan Odden about  Strategic Management of Human Capital, a new WCER project that aims to improve student performance by increasing the talent level of teachers and principals, and by aligning all elements of the human capital management system.

Tony Milanowski, Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, will discuss current best practices in teacher performance evaluation.

They’ll also talk with Steve Kimball, Consortium for Policy Research in Education, about principal performance evaluation: moving from school management to instructional leadership.

The theme of the 12th Annual WCER Conference is Human Capital: The People Side of Education Reform.

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