ASHA 12 & 1st Annual #SLPeeps Booth Recap

This chat has already occurred. To read an archive of the entire chat, please go here.

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Hard to believe but #ASHA12 has come and gone and we #SLPeeps are left with quickly diminishing memories of a beloved hashtag gone by.

We would first like to acknowledge all of the dedication, attention to detail, monetary investment and undying support that Heidi Kay and her Pediastaff extended to the #SLPeeps awareness booth. Although booth #1823 was extremely far off the beaten path (to put it mildly), Pediastaff and our volunteers were able to attract a healthy amount of visitors who were interested in spending some time learning about social media.

Many newbies were signed up with Twitter handles and we walked them thru their “inaugural tweet” to the #SLPeeps community.  Others were introduced to a whole new  visual world of Pinterest and plethora of information shared by pinning and blogging SLPs.

In addition to 1:1 trainings at the booth, step-by-step guides were made available in a 26 page .pdf version. And a traditional Learning Lab was presented by Megan Panatier (@MeganPanatier), Tara Roehl (@SpeechKeenSLP), and Kim Lewis (@ActivityTaylor), which was well attended. From #SLPeeps buttons to Flash Mobs, there was no denying the overwhelming presence of the #SLPeeps!

So now that we are left singing “Tweet Me Maybe” for hours on end after watching the FlashMob video and suffering through ASHA12 “inside joke” tweets –  it is time to begin planning for ASHA13. With your help, #SLPeeps, there will be a booth next year! We are so very grateful to Heidi Kay for establishing a very high standard to begin from. However, it is now time for our community to organize and represent.

We are hoping to have a number of volunteers working on details for the booth well in advance so the workload is minimal per individual.  As the #SLPeeps have always demonstrated, there is strength in numbers. If we can create an incredibly fun and successful FlashMob from all over the U.S. and as far as Barbados … we can definitely organize a fantastic #SLPeeps booth with a year to plan!

Hope you can join us as we are looking forward to hearing your invaluable feedback and opinions. Please join us @SLPchat on Sunday, December 2, 2012 at 2 pm for a review of what worked well and any suggestions or ideas you may have for next year, even if you don’t plan to attend ASHA13.

This post contributed by Mai Ling Chan

Professional Development ‘IRL’ – Going to a Conference

This chat has already occurred. You can see an archive of the entire North American chat here, and the entire Australian chat here.

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We, on Twitter, have gotten accustomed to every day feeling like a conference, but we all still attend real life conferences whenever we can. We likely approach conferences/professional development workshops somewhat differently, however. With ASHA 2012 occurring in a week, we will be discussing conference attendance and selection, as well as networking at and preparing for a conference.

Discussion will surround the following themes:

• Selecting which conference/workshop to attend and which one(s) to skip
• Selecting which sessions you will attend at large conferences (like ASHA or SPA)
• Preparing for a conference – What do you bring and how do you prepare yourself to get the most out of a conference?
• Comparing/contrasting ASHA/SPA to other conferences/workshops people usually attend
• Networking at a conference – reasons, approaches, and follow up

The chat will occur at 2 pm Eastern Time (New York/Toronto) on Sunday, November 11, 2012 and again on Monday, November 12 at 8 pm Australian Eastern Time (Sydney). We hope to learn a lot with you!

#SLP2B Questions and Answers from the #SLpeeps Community

These chats are now complete. You can go here to see the first chat from North America and you can go here to see the second chat from Australia.

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As SLP/SLTs we all started out as students or, going back a wee bit further, students working towards being SLP/T students. Do you remember what it was like? Do you remember the sorts of questions and concerns you had?

Our next #slpchat will focus on answering both common and specific questions that people working towards becoming SLP/Ts have. These will be generated mostly by the #SLP2B community and we hope that students will actively participate in the discussion, as well as more seasoned S&L veterans. We will pose the questions that students have throughout the chat and everyone can discuss them together. Multiple points of view are important, as well as multiple country perspectives since it can differ across the world.

STUDENTS: Whether you are hoping to apply to be a speech therapist/pathologist or about to graduate the program, please pose your questions to @slpchat (via DM is preferable, just ask us to follow you if we aren’t already) or by emailing slptanya@gmail.com.

The chat will occur on June 3rd at 2 pm New York, USA time and then again at 8:30 pm Sydney, Australia time on Monday June 4th. Anyone is welcome to attend whichever chat is most convenient for them. As always, you can easily find out what time those chats will be in your region by going to everytimezone.com and sliding the bar to either of the times listed above then checking your related local time.

For anyone who cannot make the chat, we will post the chirpstory chat archives within a day of the chat as we always do.

Are you for real?: Twitter credibility and #SLPeeps

This chat is officially completed. To read the archived tweets you can go to chat #1 at 4:30 pm Sydney, Australia time and you can go to chat #2 at 2 pm New York, US time. They are slightly different as different people participated and bring up different points or end up focusing on slightly different areas.

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#slpchat is proud to announce that we are officially 1 year old! For our first chat of 2012, we are trying something new; we will be hosting the same chat twice.  Shareka and I have joined forces with the Aussies, meaning that #slpchat will run on February 5th at 4:30 pm Sydney (Australia) time (hosted by @SpeechieLO and @bronwynah as @SLPChat) and AGAIN at 2:00 pm Toronto/New York time also on February 5th (hosted by your usual @SLPChat moderators you know and, we hope, love).

Both chats will be ‘chirpified’ and posted here on the blog for your reading pleasure after the fact. If you are wondering which chat is best for you to attend, you can check out everytimezone.com and put the yellow line to either 4 pm Sydney time or 2 pm New York time to figure out when the chat will occur in your own time zone. So, without further ado, I bring you our topic blog post to get you thinking before the chat (written by @bronwynah). Take it away, Bronwyn!
How do we judge one another as real, credible, speech language pathologists? How do consumers see our handles – what is in our name, bio, and tweet repertoire – that might ‘ring true’ as being a qualified speech language pathologist? From those (#SLPeeps) who tweet anonymously for various reasons, but align themselves with the #SLPeeps community, and those who tweet ‘as themselves’ but without authentication – the ‘blue tick’ of Twitter- there is a huge
variation in how #SLPeeps present themselves to the ‘online public’ and to one another.

Tweeting anonymously, or identifying oneself by authentic name and biographical information, there are many variations upon the theme. However, it is interesting to discuss what might motivate some people to presenting themselves a certain way on Twitter, and how that impacts upon us, our service employers, our consumers, and potentially our own families. Seemingly too much to discuss in one twitter chat, we will simply keep ourselves to this:

•  How do we judge plausibility and veracity of ‘twitter profiles’ presenting themselves as #SLPeeps?
•  How do we present ourselves, and why? What leads us to tweet anonymously, or as identifying ourselves, and what do both of these positions allow?
• Does it really matter, that the bulk of the #SLPeeps profiles, aligned as SLPs in the ‘twitter community, are not verified or verifiable?  Does it really matter if a person you are tweeting with about SLP issues, is not reallyan SLP? What legal issues arise? What interpersonal or professional issues might arise?
•  How do consumers, families, parents, and people who seek the services of an SLP, discriminate all of this andmake some critical judgements about twitter handles and the information being tweeted by presumed ‘experts’?

Please join us on Sunday, February 5th at 4:30 pm Sydney time and/or at 2:00 pm New York time to discuss these issues and the potential further reaching issues surrounding online presence and professionals.

If you have never participated in #slpchat, but want to, you can go to our various tabs at the top of this page such as “What is SLPChat?“, “How to Participate“, and “SLPChat Tips“. We hope to see you there!