Saturday, January 15, 2011

@theASE Conference 2011 via realtime and Twitter

The annual conference of the Association for Science Education is always one of my highlights of the year. Unlike last year's where snow hampered my stay, Reading this year had a bit of on and off drizzle, but nothing to panic about.

I was very kindly sponsored by the Institute of Physics in their final year of funding for the highly successful Subject Knowledge Enhancement for Physics, which I run at the University of Sussex. It meant that I got to see some of my past trainees who are all fully fledged teachers now.

Anyway, the programme of course, workshops and lectures is always colossal and it is often hard to know what to see. In addition the huge marquee of exhibitors is can also be daunting to navigate. So I decided to let Twitter be my guide. The #ASE2011 tag helped me find a variety of stands and those that I went to were delighted that it was as a result of their tweets!

Here are my highlights:

@theASE it was good this year to have a Twitter presence, I actually put out a tweet for 'hot tips' for Friday afternoon and they replied with some suggestions and a weblink- much appreciated!

@classroommedics http://www.classroommedics.co.uk/science.html had a great interactive stand, with nice lads n lasses in medic gear with their 'patient' on whom you could find pulses. A disembodied arm from which you could draw blood, which was really cool! I can imagine this being amazing for kids of all ages in schools and will really get them thinking about a career in medicine.

@SocGenMicro http://www.microbiologyonline.org.uk/teachers I spoke to Laura who was very excited about the fact that I had found their stall by Twitter. Their factpacks on Swine Flu were flying off their stand, but she also showed me their website. They hope to have some videos of microbiological laboratory techniques very soon, which I think will be very useful in the classroom. I even got a Tweet reply after visiting the stand!

I tweeted in response to visiting the Royal Institution's stall @rigb_science as they were giving away lots of goodies including lipbalm(!).

I was unable to get into the David Attenborough lecture, but was able to see it afterwards via a Tweet from @asober (but orignated by ngfl_cymcru_gcad) with a link to http://www.livestream.com/ngflcymrugcad

A friend and colleague @doc_gnome was unable to attend the conference asked me to check out some exam board stands, which I did. And tweeted an answer back!

There are a few other people who tweeted useful ideas, either shameless self-promotion (good on you) or selfless tweets to raise interest or share experiences (including best give aways!). The @TheASE were very good at retweeting these! @ZoeAndrewsAST @WowScienceSue @LightEmitting @DeclanFleming @scarycurlgirl to mention but a few.
My highlight session was the Bad Science for Schools: Good News is Bad News, led by Ed Walsh & Jo Foster. Excellent resources based on Ben Goldacre's book  'Bad Science'. These have huge potential in adressing scientific literacy and address some of the How Science Works aspects of the curriculum. There was a Twitter flurry at the time between @bengoldacre and others who had attended the course. Ed and Jo have a Twitter presence @cornwallscied but guys, I think you under Tweeted (although you were very busy presenting!).

So what have I learnt from all this? Is Twitter just a little gimmick that can be used at conference for smartphone geeks or is there something more to it? I suspect that there are a huge number of smartphone users and Twitter uses at the ASE Conference. I think this year did raise the profile of a number of stalls and sessions, particularly for me. I wonder though if everyone there Tweeted, we would be overloaded with information! However, it is a live timeline, where you can see what's hot and what's not. I enjoyed a fresh approach to tackling the ASE Conference. I think Twitter has huge opportunity for advertising products, advertising sessions, advertising stalls, professional networking, keeping in touch with people and companies of interest after the event (there are still a few #ASE2011 tweets coming up today, the weekend after). My number of followers increased significantly over the weekend. This year was good, but I think a lot of people are missing a trick.

I am looking forward to next year to see if Twitter has an even greater Tweet presence.
AC-G

1 comment:

  1. @scarycurlgirl tweets professionally as @stemclubs. Not that she's a professional tweeter, but the @stemclubs tweets are more professional in nature than @scarycurlgirl's. And commenting in the 3rd person is disorientating!

    P.s. I would expect a tweet-up or two at next year's ASE conference would work nicely.

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