Twitter: #ooe13
Participants used the hashtag #ooe13 on Twitter to post updates, exchange ideas, and follow conversations tied to each month's learning topic. A twub group also helped organize the hashtag activity for easier tracking.
Connection was the thread running through the Open Online Experience, where educators from across the K-12 and higher education spectrum found one another through shared digital spaces rather than a single physical venue. The event welcomed teachers, curriculum specialists, and co-creators into an open, community-driven format built around monthly learning topics. Because participation happened largely online, the gathering felt genuinely networked: people arrived from different regions, different classrooms, and different levels of experience, and the tools of the open web helped them locate each other.
The Twitter hashtag functioned as the event's public square, letting participants post updates, swap ideas, and follow conversations tied to each month's theme. Rather than requiring formal registration or expensive streaming, these channels kept the learning asynchronous and visible, so a teacher could join a thread days after it began and still find value in it. A companion group made it easier to track hashtag activity, and the practice of sharing links, screenshots, and short reflections helped turn isolated curiosity into a sustained community conversation.
Alongside social conversation, participants used a shared bookmarking space to collect and tag articles, tools, and classroom examples. This curation layer proved quietly powerful: over time the accumulated links became a searchable resource library that reflected the collective interests of the group, spanning instructional strategies, technology integration, and open educational practice. The act of tagging also encouraged reflection, pushing participants to articulate why a resource mattered and how it might be adapted for their own learners.
Other gathering places offered more sustained formats, including synchronous chat rooms, webinars, and presentation sessions where educators could share workflows and remixes of the month's challenges. A collaborative blog carried longer written reflections, allowing ideas to be revisited and refined over the course of the experience rather than lost in a chat scroll. Together these spaces supported both the quick exchange of a resource and the slower work of storytelling, mentoring, and shared celebration of what students and teachers were accomplishing together.