As part of the CESI Meet Spring 2011, happening on Friday May 13th in Tipperary IT in Thurles, #edchatIE invites all those attending in person as well as all other Irish educators on Twitter to take part in a mini-version of #edchatIE.

So, how will this all work?

The theme of this year's Conference, hosted by Tipperary Institute, is Storytelling in Education, so we're going to attempt to tell a story using Twitter and the #edchatIE hashtag.

What do I need to join in?

You'll definitely need a Twitter account, which is free at http://twitter.com/ 

OK, I have my Twitter account, now what?

Now we follow the usual procedure for an #edchatIE session.

So, what's that then?

Usually everyone would first post up topics to be discussed during the actual #edchatIE online session on Twitter. However, this time that part has already been done (the 3 topics that will be chosen from are the fairytwales listed below).

So, the next step involves everyone voting on, in this special case, the story they would most like to collaborate on creating. You can do this by following the link here http://twtpoll.com/kis42u and casting your vote.

When you follow the link you can vote for one of the three fairytwale story outlines below:

Fairytwale No. 1:

Goldilocks & the Three PCs
A cautionary tale of a teacher who wants the use of ICT in their classroom to be "just right".

This Fairytwale was the winner with 40% of the votes.

Here's a cheat-sheet to remind you of the real story when it comes to creating the Fairytwale @ #cesimeet

Here's the record of all of the tweets (un-edited as yet) that went into creating the Fairytwale: CESImeet-Fairytwale.pdf

Fairytwale No. 2:

Snow White
Ms. White is the principal of a seven teacher school who's just realised that not all Apples are dangerous.

Fairytwale No. 3:

Jack & the Beanstalk

When the use of ICT in school doesn't amount to a hill of beans, one plucky young teacher sets out to turn it all around.

(Much thanks to Mags Amond for the idea of collaborating on a fairytwale!)

OK, I've voted. What next?

Once the voting has officially closed, the winning Fairytwale will be the one everyone gets to collaborate on during the CESImeet - after a short presentation that will tell you all about #edchatIE

How do we start to add to the story?

In order to get things going, I'll post up the first line of the winning fairytwale and then it's over to you to continue it. You'll need to Tweet the next line. Remember, the story-telling (as well as being practice for an #edchatIE session) should be humorous, but also based around using ICT in education.

Also remember to always add in the hashtag #edchatie to your Tweet for it to appear in the fairytwale.

Won't there be a lot of people Tweeting the same next line/s?

Obviously, there will be a lot of people doing this at the same time. In order to avoid too much confusion, wait a minute to see how the story is unfolding and then add your line.

By the way, during an #edchatIE session, people will sometimes ReTweet (RT) a comment that they really agree with. If you see a sentence come up that you think moves the story along or makes an interesting plot-twist then ReTweet it too. This way I'll know which elements of the story people want to definitely keep.

After the time is up for this activity (and it'll be short enough), I'll pull together all of the Tweets to create the actual story, which will be made available to all by lunchtime at the Conference, so follow the hashtag #edchatIE to get it.

Don't forget to always use the hashtag #edchatie when you're Tweeting your story

I don't believe it!

If you don't believe this can be done take a look and a listen at this:

http://www.bbcaudiobooksamerica.com/TradeHome/Blog/tabid/58/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/147/bbcawdioThe-Twitter-Audiobook-is-Here.aspx

For more on how the Neil Gaiman Twitter story story came to life:

http://mashable.com/2009/10/13/neil-gaiman-twitter-audiobook/