I do use Twitter for school work, just not comfortably I prefer to post to the class blog & syndicate to twitter. The latest twitter crisis reinforces this.
I’ve never really liked the idea of Twitter or any other service being the official or main channel of schools (or government services). Schools should not be promoting an advertising service. My ideal would some sort of #IndieWeb set up, with micro.blog style aggregation & syndication. Federation might be a close second.
“The fact that children [in England] who are household members of a case are mandated to come into school, and children sitting next to a case in a classroom are not even considered close contacts, suggests that policies are geared towards maximising transmission rather than protecting children and their families,” Dr Deepti Gurdasani, a clinical epidemiologist at Queen Mary University of London, told the Guardian.
Here are some tips for speeding up the process of making simple posts to a Glow Blog
One of the nice things about the WordPress Post Editor is you can customise the elements that you see on the screen.
To make my posting simpler in mobile I’ve removed some elements and dragged the Featured Image section to the top of the right hand column. This makes it appear right under the post content in the mobile view.
You can also collapse section of the editor you don’t need all the time, I’ve notice my pupils do this when using their e-Portfolios.
On my phone I’ve bookmarked the New Post Page on blogs I want to post to.
Im my case I’ve saved it to my home screen so I don’t even need to open my browser and go through my bookmarks.
This means that I can go straight to the new post page. If I am not logged onto Glow I am taken through the RM Unify password screen first. I use the save password facility on my phone to speed this up.
Editing a post with images and text can get a little messy, and therefore slow, on mobile. If I want to make a quick post, I don’t put the images in the editor, but use the featured image feature. This adds an image, typically, to the top of your post, and keeps it clear of the text.
Using my home screen icon, saved password, simplified new post page and a featured image means I can post a twitter sized post and picture in around 90 seconds.
In case you are missing the interaction and publicity of twitter you can of course auto post your blog to twitter using several free services, dlvr.it, IFTTT and Microsoft Flow (using your glow account.)
A follow up to yesterday’s post, where I figured out how to extract the source from a list of tweets.
I asked a few folk on twitter if they had lists of schools twitter accounts by LA in twitter list. Andrew Bailey gave me an Angus one and Malcolm Wilson pointed me to William Jenkins who has a pile of lists. I quickly grabbed 18 LAs alone with Andrews to make 20 to run through my script.
The results are above.
I am interest in the result only tangentially. Partially is my idea of fun to figure out how to write the script. Mainly I am interested in thinking about encouraging folk to use Glow Blogs as a primary place they post school and class news as opposed to twitter. I’ve been told a few times that teachers use twitter because it is easier. I want to explain how blogging can be a lot easier. This indicates that mobile devices are the way to go.
