1. I.heart their tweet deck!! They have SOOOO many chat groups (over 500!!!) already to go on a calendar! If you don't already see yours, you can add it! Chatting through Participate is so easy. Once, I had trouble getting online with them - I thought I was going to quit Twitter chats if it was going to be that hard without Participate. Seriously.
2. When you're done chatting, everything you've talked about and all resources collected through the chat can be curated in your account at Participate! FOR. REAL!! AND....you don't have to type your #hashtagchat each time you want to post something! Have I sold you yet?!
3. You can create collections of your own, or find items within Participate to add to your collections. For example, my school uses Literacy by Design for language arts. I add to it by curating videos to help teach themes. Instead of trying to remember where I saved my videos on my computer, I simply save them within Participate, in a collection I created for Literacy by Design. I have other collections for math, sea turtles, Black History Month, etc.
I have to confess that I accidentally deleted my Literacy by Design collection a while ago, so I recently recreated it. Oopsies. Luckily I knew what I had in there! It does happen, and it was my fault!
4. You can also collaborate with other Participate users! There are chat windows you can open and have dialog with other users. For example, I may want advice from someone on what else to add to my Black History collection. I can invite other users, then ask them what I'd like to know. They reply back on their own time, similar to Twitter Direct Message, Facebook Messenger and emails.
5. Customer Service is fantastic! If you have a problem or an idea to improve their service, please feel free to share it with them! The staff at Participate are THE BEST!
6. It's a free site, yes, but that doesn't even factor in for me.
So....have I convinced you to give them a try yet? Here's my advice:
Start with an account. You can create an account with email, Google+ or Twitter.
Join your favorite Twitter chat group for a few weeks and you'll be hooked! You'll have Participate.com bookmarked on your computer toolbar, or always open, like me. 😊
But please don't stop there! After you've gotten comfortable in chats, start a collection or two, and invite others to join Participate, too! Participate is a place for many to do just that - Participate! It is a verb - a vibrant, active place for teachers to come together to collaborate and work together, creating wonderful materials and resources for students worldwide!
I will blog more about their awesome Professional Development courses and badges soon, but I have run out of time for today. My family duties call...aka laundry is stacking up, dishes, vacuuming, etc.
