Category Archives: twitter

podcast, twitter

e-Learning Stuff Podcast #018: Digital Literates

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James Clay, Kev Hickey, Shri Footring and Lisa Valentine discuss Twitter, digital literacy, digital identity and other stuff too.

This is the eighteenth e-Learning Stuff Podcast, Digital Literates.

Download the podcast in mp3 format: Digital Literates

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

James is joined by Kev Hickey and Shri Footring. Lisa Valentine joins us later in the conversation.

e-Learning Stuff Podcast #018: Digital Literates

Shownotes

  • Digital Literacy Debate – The purpose of the debate is to try and move forward on issues surrounding Digital Literacy. The focus of the debate will be the UK education sector, but international attendees and contributors are more than welcome. Recently, Digital Literacy has gained a lot of traction within academic and educational technology discussion within the UK, and is generally thought of as A Good Thing. However, some important questions have yet to be addressed.
  • James, Shri, Kev and Lisa all use Twitter, but some of us prefer Jaiku.
  • So what is a hashtag?
  • Pat Parslow’s comment on the term digital native.
  • Marc Prensky’s new paper on digital wisdom.
  • Dave White’s blog a post about residents or visitors to the online world.
  • The e-Learning Stuff podcast on the whole digital native, immigrant, visitor, resident, naturalised debate.

Photo source.

facebook, podcast, social networking, twitter

e-Learning Stuff Podcast #015: Social networking rots your brains

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James, Lilian, Lisa and Ron discuss the recent publicity over Susan Greenfield’s comments in the Daily Mail on the “dangers” of social networking and young people’s brains. Does using social networking sites lead to loneliness and isolation? Do users of Facebook and Twitter feel excluded from society. In this podcast we discuss the furore and the issues.

This is the fifteenth e-Learning Stuff Podcast, Social networking rots your brains.

Download the podcast in mp3 format: Social networking rots your brains

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

James is joined by Lilian Soon, Lisa Valentine and Ron Mitchell.

e-Learning Stuff Podcast #015: Social networking rots your brains

Shownotes

Finally the photo above of zombies meeting in the real world was organised on Facebook. So you could argue that Facebook has turned them into zombies, however I don’t think these kinds of social gatherings was what Susan Greenfield meant.

facebook, social networking, twitter

Social networking rots your brain

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One of the reasons I am not a great fan of Facebook was the pelthora of zombies being thrown around. It would seem that according to a briefing from Susan Greenfield to the House of Lords that using social networking sites such as Facebook rots your brain. Does that that she thinks if you use Facebook you become a zombie?

Social networking rots your brain

Well what she said was and this quote was taken from the BBC News site:

Real-life conversations “require a sensitivity to voice tone, body language and perhaps even to pheromones – those sneaky molecules that we release and which others smell subconsciously.

“Moreover, according to the context and, indeed, the person with whom we are conversing, our own delivery will need to adapt. None of these skills are required when chatting on a social networking site,” she said.

“It is hard to see how living this way on a daily basis will not result in brains, or rather minds, different from those of previous generations.”

The story then ran in the Daily Mail and Susan was was interviewed and said

“We know how small babies need constant reassurance that they exist … My fear is that these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment.”

Okay, let’s take a step back.

Any one who does one thing for a long amount of time is going to have potential health problems. However that one thing doesn’t have to be social networking, it could be television, sports, dancing, piano playing, even reading books.

The thing is that for some social networking is a way of expanding their social non-online life, a way of enhancing and enriching their outside life.

If you spend your entire life on Facebook then yes, in my opinion you have a problem. However everyone I know on Facebook has a life outside Facebook, and Facebook has enhanced their social life and improved (and increased) interation in the real world.

Personally I have found that using this blog, using Twitter and Jaiku, has made my working life easier and better.

The web and social networking has enabled me to make new and better friendships in the real world. Now when I go to conferences I know people and they know me, we can focus on the conference and the content of the conference without having to go through the process of building relationships (as we have done that already online).

This was readily apparent at the recent LSIS eCPD event, where lots of people came to chat to me who I knew via my blog, mailing lists, Twitter, Jaiku and even Facebook. Without social networking those conversations probably wouldn’t have taken place.

It would seem I am not alone in thinking that what Susan is saying is bunk.

Dr Ben Goldacre who was on Newsnight on Tuesday night has published his reaction to the article on the Bad Science blog.

It is my view that Professor Greenfield has been abusing her position as a professor, and head of the Royal Institution, for many years now, using these roles to give weight to her speculations and prejudices in a way that is entirely inappropriate.

he goes on…

We are all free to have fanciful ideas. Professor Greenfield’s stated aim, however, is to improve the public’s understanding of science: and yet repeatedly she appears in the media making wild headline-grabbing claims, without evidence, all the while telling us repeatedly that she is a scientist. By doing this, the head of the RI grossly misrepresents what it is that scientists do, and indeed the whole notion of what it means to have empirical evidence for a claim.

Another good blog post on this is from Sue Thomas, she says:

The danger of scientists untempered by Humanities knowledge of history, anthropology, sociology and culture is once again rearing its head. Baroness, it’s not enough to measure brain activity, we must understand it in the wider context of human culture. Please, get some experts with a wider range of viewpoints on your team, including some who really know about education and social networking. You are in urgent need of a transliterate perspective. Without it you are a danger to society.

So what do I think apart from agreeing with Sue and Ben that Susan’s theories are a little bit cracked and bunk?

The main problem is that parents (and some learners) will only read the headlines, the scary articles in the newspapers. They won’t watch Newsnight, they won’t read the blog articles hitting back. No they will remember the headlines and certainly won’t check the science.

As a result educational institutions which want to enhance and enrich face to face learning experiences with Web 2.0 and social web tools may find they receive complaints and anger from concerned parents and students.

Finally the photo above of zombies meeting in the real world was organised on Facebook. So you could argue that Facebook has turned them into zombies, however I don’t think these kinds of social gatherings was what Susan Greenfield meant.

twitter

Twittersheep

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There are quite a few Twitter tools and services out there, one I have found recently and is quite interesting is Twittersheep.

Twittersheep

What Twittersheep does is create a Wordle style word map based on the biographical description of your followers.

It’s a kind of one off Twitter service, but what it does is indicate the sort of people you follow, as you can see from mine, learning and e-learning are included in a lot of my followers’ biographical descriptions.

alt, blog, flickr, m-learning, twitter

It’s mobile and it’s glossy

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The 5th February sees the launch of the LSIS eCPD event in London. Not sure how many people will turn up due to the snow. I am thought about not going, though it was aright when I left, it has got heavier back home and even now it looks quite thick out of the train window as I write this.

I am running a workshop at the event which is looking at mobile learning. Unlike the MoD event, this time I have forty-five minutes which is longer, but is still not really enough time!

In the session I hope to get the delegates to discuss and talk about how mobile technologies can be used to support, enhance and enrich the learning experience of learners. I am also hoping (as I have done at previous workshops) the delegates use the same mobile technologies to post their reflections and views online.

The workshop blog can be found here.

The podcast channel (we’re using Gabcast) can be found here.

Some people will be posting to Jaiku and Twitter and I am also hoping to send images to Flickr, as well as video to Seesmic. There may even be some Qik video as well.

Even if you are not at the event, I hope you can still join in with the workshop by contributing to the stuff posted online adding comments, or joining in with the Twitter and Jaiku discussions.

The first session (as is the rest of the day) is being broadcast online using Elluminate and you can find out how to access the online stuff on the ALT website.

If people turn up it should be fun.

coffee, twitter

Twitter bigger than Digg

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Digg has been the social bookmarking site over the last few years (much more so than in my opinion the more useful delicious). Digg has always been a popular site, however in the last year Twitter has shot ahead of Digg in terms of users.

The BBC reports

Twitter, the mobile phone-based micro-blogging service, rocketed nearly 1000% in use in the UK over the past year according to industry analysts HitWise.

For the first time, the site has seen more visits than “social bookmarking” site Digg, which allows users to share links to sites.

From my perspective as a long term user of Twitter, I joined Twitter in March 2007, I have seen the number of people I know start using Twitter grow and grow.

I am now part of a large community of e-learning people who use Twitter and as a result find it a useful tool and a interesting place to visit.

Back in 2007, as one of only a few e-learning people using Twitter, it was very little about the conversation and much more about “what are you doing” as you can see from this page, very little @replies and much more about what I was doing and thinking.

Reading documents on personlisation in preparation for a meeting on Wednesday. 6:58 PM Mar 26th, 2007 from web

How do we make resources for HE students available? 6:54 PM Mar 26th, 2007 from web

ILT Stategic thinking. 6:16 PM Mar 26th, 2007 from web

Why can you never find an e-mail when you need it. 6:09 PM Mar 26th, 2007 from web

Checking a JISC ITT on the retention of learning materials. 5:55 PM Mar 26th, 2007 from web

Reading Ferl. 5:53 PM Mar 26th, 2007 from web

Reflecting on ILT. 5:04 PM Mar 26th, 2007 from web

What percentage of your students actively use the college VLE? 3:41 PM Mar 26th, 2007 from web

Preparing my team for College Development Day on the 18th April. 3:17 PM Mar 26th, 2007 from web

Thinking about webquests for ACL. 1:51 PM Mar 26th, 2007 from web

Reading articles. 10:11 AM Mar 26th, 2007 from web

Now downloading a publication that Andy Black posted to the champs list: http://www.becta.org.uk/res… 9:56 AM Mar 26th, 2007 from web

Thinking about how I can an audio track to my bidding presentation I gave to the RSC SW last week. 9:55 AM Mar 26th, 2007 from web

Now my typical Twitter responses are in reply and in conversation with others.

In Gloucester, one meeting today, which is in five minutes. about 4 hours ago from web

@jont or perhaps Cheltenham about 19 hours ago from TwitterFon in reply to jont

@jont Gloucester about 19 hours ago from TwitterFon in reply to jont

Probably going to run an unconference on mobile learning later this year. about 22 hours ago from web

Coming towards the end of the m-Champions event. about 22 hours ago from web

@MikeNolan I vote for Vodafone. 11:20 AM yesterday from web in reply to MikeNolan

@cristinacost I think I would rather go without internet then have to go to McDs @GrahamAttwell hopefully you can find a coffee shop w/wifi 11:16 AM yesterday from web in reply to cristinacost

As a result twitter is proving to be a much more valuable tool for me in sharing practice, finding out stuff and creating and developing relationships than it was when I first started using it nearly two years ago now.

It is now very easy to access Twitter via mobile devices (despite the lack of SMS support in the UK) and I will often use Twitterfon on my iPod touch.

I have written about Twitter before notably why I think Twitter is an important tool and that the informal chat side is as equally as important as the formal chat. A few people have “complained” about irrelevant tweets and I am aware of some who have stopped following others because of their so called shallow and lightweight tweets. These people in my opinion are missing the point about the real value of Twitter. I am sure that they get something from Twitter, but you have to ask the question is Twitter about following people and reading informative Tweets or is it about communication and community?

I use Twitter in various ways, as well as informing my community that I am drinking a coffee, I also let them know about various (what I think are) interesting things I am doing.  I tweet about blog posts I have made. I also use Twitter as a backchannel at events and conferences, finding out what is going on and what I find interesting.

However telling people is only half the story, maybe even as  little as 20% of the  story. The other key thing about Twitter is about communication, responding to other tweets, having a conversation. Responding to what others have written, or acting on what others have written. This was not how I used Twitter when I started (as you can see above) but is now a core reason why I use Twitter now.

I should say, for me in addition to the good stuff, Twitter is about the irrelevance, it is about the non-useful stuff. If all you ever post is what blog entries you have written, why would I follow you on Twitter, I might as well subscribe to your blog’s  RSS feed.

I want to find out what you’re doing, but I also want to find out the mundane things as well. This makes for a more rounded conversation and community.

One important thing for me to say is that for me Twitter is all about the coffee.

It’s the coffee you drink with colleagues during a break from work, where you discuss work stuff, but also discuss your commute into work, what you saw on TV last night, what bizarre thing you just saw, the weather.

It’s the coffee you drink whilst browsing the web and when you find an interesting web  site and you post the link to your blog, in an e-mail, on your VLE.

It’s the coffee you drink in a coffee shop, where you’re reading the paper, reading a book, chatting.

It’s the coffee you drink in the Library reading a journal, a book, writing stuff.

It’s the coffee you drink with fellow delegates during a break or at lunch at a conference. Where you discuss the keynotes, the presentations, the workshops, where you are going next, your hotel, the food, the coffee, what you do, where you’re going, what gadgets you have in your gadget bag.

Twitter is about these moments, but without the physical and geographical limitations. Twitter also allows people from different institutions, different sectors, different organisations, different departments to share these moments.

When you decide to follow someone, ask yourself could you drink coffee with this person, would they drink coffee with you?

At the end of the day Twitter is all about the coffee.

Twitter bigger than Digg</a></i>

Photo source.

So when did I first Twitter about coffee, you did have to ask, the first time was the day after I started using Twitter.

Just drinking coffee and about to leave for work. 7:04 AM Mar 27th, 2007 from web