In August this year Pascal Dresse, founder of Kidsedchatnz left for Australia and passed the Kidsedchatnz organisation on to me.
I have thoroughly enjoyed taking over Kidsedchatnz and during that time I have tried to grow the concept. Some of the initiatives I have introduced have been:
- Making Kidsedchatnz weekly.
- Increasing Kidsedchatnz from 30 minutes to 1 hour.
- Creating a new Kidsedchatnz blog.
- Introducing Tweet of the Week for the best tweet during the Kidsedchatnz session.
- Introducing a Kidsedchatnz Mascot and badges.
- Changing Kidsedchatnz from a Hashtag twitter chat to List twitter chat.
- Creating how to join Kidsedchatnz videos
- Running a 'Create a Kidsedchatnz Logo competition' and choosing a Kidsedchatnz logo.
- Entering Kidsedchatnz in the Interface Awards which we are a finalist.
Wow, I have been busy!
Anyway I thought it was time Kidsedchatnz had a change and I was preparing to step aside and let someone else take up the reigns.
After a lot of thought I came to the conclusion that I love Kidsedchatnz and still wanted to be involved but maybe just not running everything.
Solution? Co-organisers! A time share based model! Kidsedchatnz has always been a team effort with lots of fantastic classes supporting it every week. This was the perfect solution!
The idea was for everyone to run the ship for 1 week at a time. For that week you would have to get your class to make the topic/questions, promote it, moderate, choose tweet of the week and put posts on the blog. Then the next week someone else would have a turn.
So I jumped on twitter and sent out a few Direct Messages to the core/regular Kidsedchatnz teachers who take part.
After sending out the messages I left my phone at home and went into town to get lunch. While away I was thinking, "I wonder if anyone will be keen?"
What did I find on my phone when I returned? 21 direct tweets, 15 direct messages and numerous e-mails! BOOM! Everyone was keen! The Super 7 co-organisers were born!
So who are the Super7? Well they are Pascal Dresse - @PascalDresse, Reid Walker - @ReidHns1, Marcelle Natusch - @MNatusch, Marnel van der Spuy - @1MvdS, Simone Gentil - @simone015, Juliet Revell - @Juliet_Revell and me, Stephen Baker - @PalmyTeacher
Wow, what a fantastic team! We all actually know each other reasonable well from our years of collaborating and connecting on twitter.
Our goal is to grow the concept and keep it going as a great learning vehicle for the kids! What do you think? Is it going to work?
Awesome guys!! Looks great!!! I look forward to getting my class and eventually school on board with Kidsedchatnz!! Keep up the great work guys!
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