{"id":479,"date":"2015-04-24T00:35:08","date_gmt":"2015-04-24T04:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/?p=479"},"modified":"2015-04-30T06:39:00","modified_gmt":"2015-04-30T10:39:00","slug":"dipping-your-toes-into-the-mtbos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/2015\/04\/24\/dipping-your-toes-into-the-mtbos\/","title":{"rendered":"Dipping your toes into the #MTBoS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A year ago I wrote my first math related tweet on my way home from the 2014 NCTM conference. \u00a0Over the past\u00a0year I have managed to get pretty involved in the Math Twitter Blog-o-Sphere, and received a lot of benefits along the way. \u00a0Here&#8217;s how any new person could\u00a0actually get started\u00a0based on my experience and\u00a0also whatever knowledge I&#8217;ve picked\u00a0up along the way.<\/p>\n<h4>1. \u00a0There&#8217;s no shame in lurking.<\/h4>\n<p>Many people will disagree with me, but I think lurking is understandable for a certain period of time. \u00a0Before I tweeted I have to say I lurked for a while but I really did not get much out of it.<\/p>\n<p>But if you&#8217;re going to lurk, do it right!<\/p>\n<p>However, lurking is good when done well and even the most seasoned people need to switch to lurk mode when they get busy. Here are some first steps:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Fill up your\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mathtwitterblogosphere.weebly.com\/signing-up-with-twitter.html\">Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\/or <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.feedly.com\/feedly-tutorial\/\">Feedly<\/a>\u00a0with quality stuff\u00a0&#8211; It is too much work to go google the people you want to keep track of every day. \u00a0Make accounts so you can have all the latest happenings on your phone whenever you have down time (it&#8217;s better than playing 2048). \u00a0Twitter is, well, twitter, but feedly is a way to collect the tweets\u00a0of lots of people you follow. \u00a0Feedly may be for you if you like reading long form, as it creates a personal magazine of all the blogs\u00a0you follow.<\/li>\n<li>Follow conversations &#8211; As you transition away from googling things you are interested, start following the conversations of\u00a0interesting people. \u00a0Look to follow the conversations in comments on blogs or along the conversation threads in twitter. You can learn a lot about current issues that you might not have known you cared about, and find more things to follow.<\/li>\n<li>Think like an ethnographer, study new things or people you may not have heard of before. \u00a0It may help to keep track of what you find by using something like <a href=\"http:\/\/getpocket.com\/\">pocket<\/a>\u00a0or <a href=\"http:\/\/evernote.com\">evernote<\/a>\u00a0or, you know,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nc_teach\/status\/589230677616373761\">paper<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>2. Get off the fence: \u00a0Ask Questions!<\/h4>\n<p>Once you learn your way around, and want to get your feet wet, it might be hard to know what to say. \u00a0So an easy thing to do would be to ask, right? \u00a0Odds are you met someone at the conference who you talked to about all this, ask them a question. \u00a0Here was my first tweet after the conference.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" width=\"550\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Mythagon\">@Mythagon<\/a> Is there a site where people are posting reviews of the NCTM talks?<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Carl Oliver (@carloliwitter) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/carloliwitter\/status\/455005031888986112\">April 12, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>If you can&#8217;t think of anyone to ask a question to, but you have a relevant\u00a0question, you can always add #MTBoS to the end of your tag and someone can help you.<\/p>\n<p>This is also a good idea for a blog post. \u00a0What is an issue that you struggle with? \u00a0What questions do you have about it? \u00a0Here&#8217;s one of my early posts about my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/2014\/05\/06\/helping-kids-to-write-proofs-of-mathematical-phenomena\/\">struggles with writing proofs<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h4>3. \u00a0Answer questions<\/h4>\n<p>So now you&#8217;ve lurked, you understand the conversations going on, and you feel comfortable asking questions. \u00a0You&#8217;ve come a long way, and it may be the case that you can help someone. \u00a0Now would be a good time to do it. \u00a0Remember this is a two way street, and this community only benefits others because people like you are not afraid to share your knowledge and your brilliance. \u00a0It can be terrifying to think of yourself as an expert opining on a topic, so don&#8217;t. \u00a0Think of yourself as a colleague\u00a0helping out one of their own.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" width=\"550\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/wahedahbug\">@wahedahbug<\/a> This link goes straight to the ops and alg part of the wiki page that you posted. Hope it helps: <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/5NnwkTTZD3\">https:\/\/t.co\/5NnwkTTZD3<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Carl Oliver (@carloliwitter) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/carloliwitter\/status\/460208498178285569\">April 27, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>This is also a good idea for a blog post. \u00a0You can answer people&#8217;s questions explicitly, or just write a post that more or less answers questions that you would have to answer.<\/p>\n<h4>4. \u00a0Create spaces for conversations<\/h4>\n<p>Once you get comfortable on the MTBoS\u00a0and have had a number of interactions, you may see things things that these other people would want to talk about it. \u00a0Well you can create the space for that conversation by writing a tweet or a blog post about the issue. \u00a0I can&#8217;t guarantee that everyone is going to get a conversation going immediately, but that doesn&#8217;t mean that it isn&#8217;t important and valuable.<\/p>\n<h4>What do you think?<\/h4>\n<p>I think this 4-step progression is more or less my path to getting involved. \u00a0Do you think it will work for you? \u00a0Let me know in the comments:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Lurk<\/li>\n<li>Ask Questions<\/li>\n<li>Answer Questions<\/li>\n<li>Create Spaces for Conversation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>#MTBoS 10?\/30<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A year ago I wrote my first math related tweet on my way home from the 2014 NCTM conference. \u00a0Over the past\u00a0year I have managed to get pretty involved in the Math Twitter Blog-o-Sphere, and received a lot of benefits along the way. \u00a0Here&#8217;s how any new person could\u00a0actually get started\u00a0based on my experience and\u00a0also [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"What I learned in the past year cc:@exploreMTBoS: Dipping your toes into the #MTBoS http:\/\/wp.me\/p4xz6U-7J","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[11],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xz6U-7J","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":480,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions\/480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}