Chatting About Pencils on Twitter

Educators on Twitter have been posting tweets about pencils. In fact, hundreds of messages are on Twitter have been tagged with #pencilchat. It doesn't sound very interesting to chat about graphite in a wooden holder, right? Well, the allegories, absurdities, and awesomeness of these tweets are not to be missed!

It all started with John Spencer. He says, "I wrote a few tweets with the hashtag #pencilchat, not expecting anything more than a few retweets and some banter with fellow techie-luddites. Malyn Mawby joined in, along with a few of her followers and all of a sudden there was a conversation."

The conversation about pencils exploded from there. Not only do these tweets show insight, inventiveness, and imagination, but they demonstrate the power of hashtags. You don't have to follow people on Twitter to view their tweets with a hashtag like #pencilchat. Simply go to twitter.com/search and do a seach for #pencilchat.

Here's just a sampling of what's been posted: 

http://twitter.com/#!/erinneo/status/142481984655081472

http://twitter.com/#!/timbuckteeth/status/142757359385714689

http://twitter.com/#!/tgwynn/status/142703910803603457

http://twitter.com/#!/skibtech/status/143037107127070720

http://twitter.com/#!/andreareid/status/143069611573780480

http://twitter.com/#!/emergentmath/status/143040760776900608

http://twitter.com/#!/mcleod/status/142477445042417664

http://twitter.com/#!/srtasmith9/status/143017150972567553

http://twitter.com/#!/wmchamberlain/status/142667965924519936

http://twitter.com/#!/bmob1111/status/143013661034811393

http://twitter.com/#!/mrlosik/status/142454361333833729

http://twitter.com/#!/allen_shawn/status/143144332860461057

http://twitter.com/#!/ransomtech/status/142988224099397632

http://twitter.com/#!/kelownagurl/status/142768009470160897

http://twitter.com/#!/pammoran/status/142551218215067648

http://twitter.com/#!/simon_elliott/status/143043326919196673

Other hastags you might be interested in include #edapp for sharing educational apps, #iear and #slide2learn for mobile learning, and #edchat for selected topics about education. There's also #EduWin for sharing daily successes. And, who knows what other hashtags will become a Twitter sensation in the future!

Update: Now there's #jedichat where educators are using Star Wars references.