Things get a little scary on twitter on Halloween. We all dress up as each other and go in costume. We did it last year, but didn’t keep documentation. This year, I did.
Blogging/Twittering
Math Prom
Blogotwitterversphere
I’m currently at PCMI in Utah (that’s the Park City Math Institute) for three weeks. There are about 50 middle and high school math teachers, all geeking out about teaching. Tomorrow I’m supposed to give a 5 minute talk about blogs and twitter. Little do they know it will be 7.5 minutes. Mwa hahaha. Talking about this stuff is not a big deal, and given a microphone and an internet enabled laptop, I could probably talk for a good hour. But to whittle away at my thoughts until I hit some core ideas that I can collapse into 5 minutes — that sounded like a fun challenge.
I decided to create a pecha kucha (20 powerpoint slides, 20 seconds per slide; see my favorite one here). Making one was new to me. And dang, it was hard. I failed. It turns out I didn’t get to 20 slides, and most have a little over 20 seconds of talking. So below you can watch the presentation that resulted out of the failed pecha kucha. Or, alternatively, the new style of presenting I like to call pechaka kuchaka.
Before diving right in and watching, I need you to watch one 18 second video. We couldn’t play it in the session for technological reasons. So watch it. More enticement: there’s a BABY in it. The baby may or may not fly using magic.
Now for the presentation. Sorry about my voice. You’re not the only one who hates it.
Note this isn’t a post about how to blog or twitter. Or how to separate the wheat from the chaff when reading tweets and blog posts. Or how to not get overwhelmed with all the info out there in the blogotwitterversphere. This are just some of my current thoughts on some reasons why I do it.
I just want to share again Dan’s contribution to my presentation one last time, since it captures so much.
For those of you who are interested in these ideas and want to learn more about blogs and twitter, I’ve compiled a few links for you to explore more:
(0) My twitter page
(1) How to start your own blog (my thoughts, Kate’s thoughts, Elissa’s thoughts, Riley’s thoughts)
(2) My “Why Twitter” post.
(3) I made special note of The Moment when I started thinking of my tweeps (twitter buddies) as friends. Even though I don’t know them IRL [in real life].
(4) I save my favorite bits of twitter conversation, and aperiodically post them. I save more of the witty banter than the math substance stuff (which tends to get codified on peoples’s blogs). But you can see that we honestly do like each other a lot. Even though, again, I don’t know them IRL. To see these conversations, just look at the “FAVORITE TWEETS” page at the top of this blog. Or click here. If you’re looking to find some good peeps to follow, read these and pick the funniest ones. They’ll keep you going for days.
(5) If you want to see the blogs I read, just look on the right, at my blogroll. Some of them are defunct now, but I can’t quite delete them yet. The two most famous blogs are by far are Dan Meyer’s dy/dan and Kate Nowak’s f(t). (Apparently having mathematical notation in the title of your blog makes you an instant winner.) Our very own PCMIer Jesse Johnson has a blog (Math Be Brave) and Cal Armstrong does too (Things I Do).
(6) You can see all the blog posts that I find amazing here. It updates as I find more and more awesomeness.
(7) Some lists that people have made of math teachers on twitter are here and here.
TWITTER T-SHIRTS
So you know those t-shirts that I was thinking of getting made? Well, tonight I thought: why the heck not?
Without further ado, the t-shirts are here!
Some details about them. Each tshirt has a front and back, and there are a few different color tshirts. The front says (in various colors):
While the back says:
The #needaredstamp hashtag is always printed in red. [1]
I don’t know much about women’s t-shirts, but I know they are cut differently. So I made a few of those too. The cut of them looks like this:
There were tons of choices for the type of t-shirts to be printed on, but I figured I’d just choose the cheapest. And in case you were wondering, no, I’m not making money off of these or anything. I put the commission at $0 because, well, how awful would that be to profit off of my selfless and awesome twitterfriends.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I just made these, so I haven’t ordered one yet. They are definitely not high quality shirts. So I don’t know if they suck or if they rock.
[1] It wasn’t feasible without driving up the prices to include the detailed #needaredstamp picture I wanted to include. Plus, I figured if you taught Algebra I vs. Linear Algebra, the stamps would be totally different. If you don’t know what this hashtag means, read this from the bottom up.
UPDATE: My shirt arrived today, and I’ve been asked for photos. So here’s my narcissistic photoshoot!
How BlogBuddies became Friends
I’m not gonna rehash my “why twitter” post, but I have to say that twitter has added something new to my life, something I didn’t have before. Friends, who are online.
In the math office, it’s weird to say “I heard this great idea from this blog person I sort of interact with.” Do I call these people my colleagues? bloggers? twitterers? Wow, I can imagine the howls of execration my colleagues would cry if I said: “Oh I got this great idea from my tweep.” Twitter induces eyerolling and hatred for the masses. Trust me, I know.
But now I know what to call them.
Friends.
A few weeks ago I had one of the hardest I’ve ever experienced as a teacher — emotionally, physically, and mentally draining. I know it seems like we say that at the end of every week, but I really meant it that week. I had a total meltdown. And so early in that week I logged onto twitter, and posted something cryptic about having a terrible day, and got some really nice messages from people back. These are people I’ve shared materials with, my ideas with, and my everyday foibles with. I shot those who commiserated with me an email with more details.
When pressing “send” I did kind of wonder why I was doing that. Who really were these people that I’m sharing my frustrations with? But at the same time, it felt so natural. We talk to each other almost every day, about the things we’re doing at school. We share, tease, joke, and laugh with each other. And I needed to get something off my chest — something I couldn’t really say to people in my school. These people have become not only my virtual support. They are also my very real support. And yes, we are friends because we go through the tough times together. We help each other out, be it a pedagogical question, or a math problem answer.
But we also just “get” each other.Like, yeah, we have fun joking together.
The moment I knew I could trust these people with my own problems was this exchange:
CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE MOMENT UNFOLD
As a threat in this exchange, @SweenWSweens said “Just you wait, Sam J Shah.” I did wait, and I was schooled. When Halloween came around, @SweenWSweens actually virtually dressed up in costume. AS ME!
And just today, @dcox21 posted a picture of his (totes adorable) newborn for us to oogle at, and @jimwysocki, @Fouss, @CarissaJuneK, @jbrtva and I decided we were going to start a school where all faculty break out in choreographed song and dance at least once a week.
If you’re reading this TWITTER TEACHER BLOGGER FRIENDS. Or shall I just say friends?
YOU ROCK.
Why Twitter?
On November 18th, I decided to give Twitter a try. I wrote:
So I’ve decided there is possibly a vibrant teaching community that I’m not familiar with, because I had decided to ignore Twitter while getting the year in order. So here I am, going to take the plunge. […] I found a whole bunch of blogs by math teachers that I follow regularly. Let’s see if I can find the same on Twitter.
It is now May 10th. I have made 741 tweets. I follow 71 people. And I check twitter multiple times a day.
On November 18th, I didn’t “get” it. No one could explain to me why twitter was worth trying. But people on the blogs I read were talking about it. Before writing it off as inane… I mean, why do I care what a math teacher in Northern California had for lunch?… I gave it a shot. My goal for this post is to share with you how I use twitter, and why I continue to use twitter.
One: I joined twitter to be involved with the math teacher blogger community. Turns out, most of the people writing the blogs I follow regularly have twitter accounts. I didn’t know that so many people were on twitter before joining. So these people, who I sporadically communicated with by commenting on a post here or there, have become people I communicate more regularly with. I solicit ideas from them and I share my ideas with them. The dialogue, short and sweet, is continuous. Like a bird chirping in the electronic zeitgeist.
Two: I get to solicit advice and share frustrations. And I get to give advice.
Three: I don’t know much about the people I follow, but I do know we share a set of values about teaching math. We love what we do. Why else would we want to talk with others who are the same. Not that I don’t have great colleagues in my school, but I am the only teacher for three of my four classes. I like to have someone to hash out ideas with. These people on Twitter are those people.
Four: Links, links, links! I post links relevant to the post I’m writing on my blog. But I tweet lots of random math links that don’t seem to fit in what I’m doing now. Cool things that I think other math teachers might find useful. And others do the same. When I first started twittering, this was hands down my favorite benefit. Plus I get links about non-math related things too. Like when someone linked to the entire 5 seasons of Angel which were on sale for $57 at Amazon for one day.
Five: I actually like hearing about the ordinary, math and non-math related things that my twitter friends post. Ummm. Okay, I know that these people aren’t my friends. And that I’m not ever going to meet them in real life, for the most part. But I’ve actually come to care when someone’s kid is angry at them or when someone’s husband was in the hospital. It brings the people behind the blog posts to life. 
Six: I didn’t used to do this, but I have started doing this: when I write a blogpost, I tweet about it for other people to learn about it.
Seven: I have discovered new math teacher blogs out there by looking at the followers of some of the people I follow.
Eight: This doesn’t apply only to Twitter, but also the blogs I read. I’ve noticed that having other people care about what they do makes me care about what I do. I want to do well that much more because of them. I honestly can’t say that I would have the drive for continual improvement and spend the time thinking through things as much if it weren’t for this little community.
And that’s my story with Twitter. I can see how someone wouldn’t find it useful. But to the nay-sayers out there, I will say this: I went in thinking I probably wouldn’t find Twitter useful/interesting/fun. It was only after I was following math teachers and joining in the conversations did I actually say “hey, this is actually pretty rad.”
To visit my Twitter Page, click here.
Taking the Twitter Plunge
So I’ve decided there is possibly a vibrant teaching community that I’m not familiar with, because I had decided to ignore Twitter while getting the year in order. So here I am, going to take the plunge.
My twitter page is: http://twitter.com/samjshah
I want to join a group of high school math teachers. I found a whole bunch of blogs by math teachers that I follow regularly. Let’s see if I can find the same on Twitter.
And if you have a Twitter account and want to say hi, feel free! Right now I’m twitter-lonely.
Continuous Everywhere but Differentiable Nowhere 
