Tag: web2.0

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I guess this will be blogged and tweeted a fair bit, 3 years ago I hopeful posted:

Unfortunately I have found navigating the discussions very clunky. lots of scrolling and clicking, neither of the two views let you read and respond with out a lot of clicking.
It is hard to follow discussions that you have started and taken part in, as there is not ‘my discussions’ or even a search. There is no recent discussions list either so to see if a discussion has be updated you need to dig down into the various threads. The date on the threads is not the date that the last addition to the tread or sub thread was made.
I really hope that this can be improved on by the time the portal goes live.

Today I woke to a barrage of tweets about glow forums. Glow forums are are forum setup on glow using the popular phpBB Open Source forum solution. Like many other internet users I am already familiar with phpBB which is a vast improvement over Glow discussions.

Of course this will have training implications for glow users who have spent time getting their heads round Glow discussions but I for one will be a lot happier showing folk how to use the new forums than I ever have been waffling round the previous tools shortcomings.

With blogs and wikis due to be added this session I will not have much room to moan about glow anymore.

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twitterbird128

A while back I posted a quote from the guardian The long tail of blogging is dying which put forward the idea that a lot of blogs were going away as twitter and other easy stuff took over. Commenting was on the way out as tweeting a link or quick comment requires little work.

I think that is what is happening to me, it has been 4 weeks since I posted here, in that time I’ve made half a dozen or so posts to John’s posterous (very easily done) and at least 100 tweets.
In that time I’ve had ideas for about half a dozen blog posts, this being one. While it is easy to blog in my head, getting it into a fashion other will be able to read it take time, other things are easier.

Twitter seems to me to be affecting two aspects of blogging, commenting and reading.

Commenting

Twitter certainly seems to be cutting down on the comments generally, I’ve notice a wee drop here (from few to fewer;-), and this quote from Jeff Utecht via Graham Wegner:

Because of Twitters live constant scrolling feed, we also talked about how the “life span” of a blog post is shrinking. I use to get comments on a blog post lasting weeks. Now I post a blog, it gets a comment or maybe two in a the first 10 minutes, gets retweeted for about 20 minutes and then it’s old news.

is a little worrying blog posts have always been in danger of being forgotten due to there date stamp, but 20 minutes is quite a short life span.

Graham Wegner’s Post explains how he is not too worried about this, happy in his own place (and quotes a nice cartoon), much struck a chord with me and started me thinking about my own blog/tweet mix.

I’ve noted over the last year or so, posts that attract a fair number of tweets and no comments. These tweets, like comments can add value to a post, but are now lost or at least disconnected from the original post. I’ve not seen a good tool to aggregate tweets and add them to a blog post.
Posterous has quite a nice facility in its comment system, you can tweet the comment, but it would be nice to see the opposite, the creating of comments by tweets.

My own commenting has shrunk and I am now making a more of an effort to comment rather that just think/tweet about it.

Reading

I do much of my blog reading via NetNewsWire which helps me keep up with quite a few blogs and store various posts (like the one quoted above) for later though and re-reading. I when I changed jobs I had even more time on the train to keep up with my feeds, but I am now driving most of the time and starting to rely more on twitter for posts to read. This can lead to missing many valuable things, if something is tweeted and not blogged it can disappear very quickly indeed, especially as we seem to be following more and more folk.

Today I read a blog post Catch Up Post – Part 2 – #weather_me « The H-Blog pointing to weather tweets in UK. which looks like a fantastic resource for discussing weather in the classroom. Following links to the developers blog I found a thank you to many twitter users for feedback and suggestions. I estimate I know about half of these but had missed all the tweeting that must have gone on a month ago. I also had not added the blog to NetNewsWire, I’ve done so now. The blog is also one of the Scottish EduBlogs not listed, as far as I see, on ScotEduBlogs.
I’ve had the same experience many times, finding a link from tweet by someone who is not usually awake at the same time as me and following the trail. This makes me wonder how much more I miss.

Of course twitter is in a lot of ways useful easy and fun, from the now 14 posts here tagged twitter I’ve had a lot of value from twitter and its API, but I am wondering how to make the best of both worlds.

A Plan

  • Check my feed reader more often.
  • Add blogs to my reader when I find them from twitter.
  • Comment more, if appropriate invite bloggers to add their blogs to ScotEduBlogs.
  • Add my delicious Network‘s RSS feed to newsnetwire.
  • Use TweetDeck‘s filter feature to filter out links from various columns especially favourite tweets which I use for bookmarking.
  • Work out a better system for following the comments of posts I am interested on.

I suppose there are now teachers whose first contact with Web 2 is twitter rather than blogging, this gives me a strange sensation, and makes me wonder what is next?

Twitter image Mirjami Manninen from smashingmagazine.

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Aberdour

I am sitting on the train on my way home from Hillside school in Aberdour in Fife. I’ll probably not get this online until tomorrow. I have just spent the day on David Noble’s course on Using the Social Web to develop the Four Capacities.

Aberdour is a pretty looking village and we had a nice autumnal view when we took a minute to look out the window.

David took participants through a gament of Web 2.0 tools explained there use in theory and in practise; participants created an edublogs blog, a mp3 recording (which was uploaded to the blog), took part in a flash meeting, explored flickr, youtube and discussed many other web tools in a packed day.
As in listening to David’s booruch podcast you get the feeling you are in the safe hands of someone who not only has a leading edge grasp of the new technology, but can walk the talk, incorporating the tools in his teaching regularly over an extended period of time. He explained the tools, suggested ways of using them, pointed to good practice and reinforced them with his own practice. I was comforted by his reference to aCfE and the four capacities, it looks like some of our efforts to use the social web will support the aims of aCfE.

I was particularly interested in the use of Flash Meeting. David had organised a meeting with Lisa from England and it was the first time I had seen Flash Meeting used. Flash meeting is a free to education tool supported by the Open University. A browser based video conferencing application, whch includes a shared whiteboard and chat, it reminded me of Marratech which I’ve used in the Glow trials. Flash Meeting seemed to have the edge over Marratech o the video quality and in the fact that it is a flash/browser based application. I hope to be able to use it in school, just need to check to see what protocols it uses and if these are usable on the Glasgow network.

David Whiteboard

I also enjoyed David’s presentation, instead of powerpoint, David used a series of del.icio.us pages for each segment of the day: tagged with “3Nov1” on del.icio.us through to tagged with “3Nov7” on del.icio.us, this method of presentation was obviously very flexible due to a pile of excellent links.

Throughout the day David touch on pupils safety issues in a light way but constantly reminding us of its importance. He is in the unusual position of having services often filtered in Local Authority networks available and has to deal with the risks in a professional manner. This also meant that I could plug my laptop in and be online without any problem.

Hillside School is a residential school for boys aged 11-16 with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties David’s experience made a clear link in my mind between pupil motivation and the four capacities. David’s work shows that Social media will help us both motivate pupils and to help them move towards becoming successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors.

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Somewhat unbelievably, I am watching Ewan give a presentation via twitter!

He is at ULearn07 giving a Keynote.

nope commenting on Helen Baxter’s, I checked New Zealand current local time from WorldTimeServer.com (Ewan’s was yesterday)

notes from Ewan:

There’s no such thing as School 2.0
It implies this global classroom stuff, where we are all the same and facing the same challenges – what about cultures?

Careers 2.0: the global microbrand. Anyone with a blog can become an employer and entrepreneur. No cost, no risk, nothing to lose

Global Microbrands are what Career 2.0 is all about: edublogs: Global Microbrands for professionals

Career 2.0 or Exploitation 2.0: we need to educate the process, too or this happens: Ogre to Slay? Outsource It to Chinese – New York Times

Weirdest live blog I’ve ever done, maybe I do not need to leave the couch ever again. I am not sure if i know what Helen Baxter was talking about, but I got interesting stuff through Ewan‘s and Paul‘s twits, Paul seems to be linked up to some NZ twitters. Tweets keep everyting short and sweet, perfect for sound-bite nation or media snackers.

I think you could use twitter and some scripting to present, forget powerpoint, maybe filter tweets through some css to fill up a screen.

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Wonderful explanation of YouTube – Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us via cogdogblog and Ewan. I image it will be everywhere pretty soon.

A example of distributed working from TechCrunch.com/: Help Find Jim Gray With Web 2.0. After Jim Grey went missing at sea Amazon has stored digital satellite images and is asking for help on Mechanical Turk to spot Jim’s boat. TechCrunch says:

I hope that new web technologies will make helping people more common in the future. When tragedy strikes, people may be able to help in an effective and organized way instead of simply watching events unfold on their television.
I?m off to look at satellite images of the water outside of the San Francisco Bay. Please come help me.

Me too.

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  • http://www.bubbl.us/, flash mind mapping, I’ve spent about 1 minute on it and am convinced it would be useful in school, if we can access it. I wonder if you can create multiple accounts with one email address. if so I might give this a wee try for story planning next week.
  • dotherightthing.com here is a a Scottish story that will affect my shopping and one discussing if the site is the right thing to do.
  • I am going to point my bloggers at Sploder and Amazing Circles BETA for a bit of fun soon, I am not sure how long Sploder will be allowed in school but it looks like it would entertain at home. Hopefully using these fun tools will reinforce blogging skills that will be useful with curriculum based tasks.

  • The costs of trying to maintain a highly ordered system often outweigh the benefits, they say. A messy desk, like Einstein’s, can be “a highly effective prioritising and accessing system”, since it will develop an emergent structure modelled on how your specific mind works, not some externally imposed schema.

    from Oliver Burkeman: A right mess | Weekend | Guardian Unlimitedhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1998329,00.html