Why You Should Join in on #WeSpeechies Chats

With the influx of social media use by academics and non-academics throughout the past couple of years there has been an increase in knowledge sharing and discussion. Recently I found out about the @WeSpeechies Twitter handle and the related #WeSpeechies hashtag. They both are responsible for weekly talks that revolve around numerous topics under the speech-language pathology umbrella. These have included discussions based on different disorders (this week's was Aphasia), while others are about topics like Evidence Based Practice (and how to determine good research).

These provide such a good learning opportunity not just for practitioners but students as well. The curator of each chat is an expert in the field and is the leader of the chat. This person poses the main questions of each chat for fellow chatters to discuss. This often leads to more questions and discussion throughout the chat and for the week that follows, which is great for learning whether you can join in on the actual chat or catch up on your own time!

So far I've only been able to join in on a few of the chats as they are typically held in one of the Australian time zones. The chats I have joined led to wonderful learning opportunities and even a few new speechie friends from abroad. (I love that it's gaining international attention. We can learn from the different and similar practices in each country.) As said before, you can catch up on the chats after they've occurred, you just have to look at the #WeSpeechies hashtag (or go to the website to see an archived version of the chat a few days later). You can then join in by adding your own thoughts to the questions or comments that others posed.

If you'd like to see what future chats are about and when they are being held (or seeing archived past chats) be sure to check out the website!