The art of Twitter

Learning how to use Twitter as a tool to develop your personal learning network is not always simple, and as with any other social networking tools, there is an unwritten protocol. There is quite an art to getting the best out of it. When the Internet and e-mail was first emerging as a major communication tool set, several people proposed an Internet ettiquette, or 'Netiquette', which involved guidelines such as using UPPER CASE letters only if you were shouting. Other devices for communication emerged such as emoticons, sideways smileys that were used to attempt to overcome the reduced social cues of text only talking. We think the time has now come to introduce a set of guidelines for Twitter - 'Twettiquette' if you like - and so Wolfgang Rheinhardt, Martin Ebner and I recently got together to write a paper for the World Computer Conference, held last month in Brisbane, Australia. I presented the paper, and we put together a slide set to accompany the presentation. Here it is below, in all it's unexpurgated glory. As you can see, it's entitled: 'All I need to know about Twitter I learned at kindergarten', and is, we think, a humourous, lighthearted take on using Twitter. We hope it makes you smile, think and tweet some more.

All I need to know about Twitter I learned at kindergarten

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The art of Twitter by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Getting Granular with Twitter

I recently presented two papers at the World Computer Congress in Brisbane, Australia. The first, 'Getting Granular with Twitter' was a paper primarily written by my old friends in Austria, Martin Ebner and Sandra Schaffert and their colleagues, and a very good job they did of making sense of Twitter as a conference back channel and event amplifier. I was delighted to be asked to be involved in the paper and presented it to an audience of educators during the Learn IT strand of the WCC conference. I have now found time to post up the slides (after struggling with Slideshare's protocols, I managed to find a way around them by converting the .pptx file to .pdf) and they have already been receiving some attention from readers since I posted them up last night. I hope you find the slides useful:

Getting Granular on Twitter

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Getting granular with Twitter by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Educamping in Austria

I'm not particularly keen on camping out. I find it a little intense. But Educamp is another matter, and I have just been invited by supremo Martin Ebner to host/chair/moderate an English speaking track for this illustrious event. You may recall, if you are a regular reader of this blog, that I took part remotely in an earlier episode of Educamp, when it was held in March in illmenau, Germany. Or I would have participated, if my audio links to the conference had actually worked ... here's my account of what happened. Well, this time, I will be there in person, so unless I am struck dumb, all will be well, and people will actually be able to make out what I'm saying (....look - stop it!)

Educamp is really different. Here's what Martin says about this 'unconference': 'You go there and then we are offering an empty session plan and any participant who likes, stands up and says they want to do a session on this topic and [they] pick one of the empty places .... this will be done before the camp starts and then we can go to any session and discuss it - no papers and no prepared presentations, just on the fly and discussion.' Interested? Intrigued? Come along and find out more.... (no need to bring your tent, because it's not that kind of camp)

Educamp is held in Graz, Austria this November, and it promises to be just as eclectic, challenging, ad hoc and stimulating as previous Educamp events. Click on the link above and you will get the English version, and if you are so moved to do so, think about attending and doing a presentation. I'd look pretty silly sitting there chairing a session in English, which no-one was speaking at.... wouldn't I?

PS: No tents were harmed during the making of this blogpost.

Twittering at Conferences

I really missed the Edumedia Conference in Salzburg this year. I have pleasant memories of last year's conference and the beautiful city of Salzburg. Last year there were some great presentations, many productive conversations over coffee and I made several new friends with some really smart and knowledgeable professionals. This year's Edumedia Conference held in the idyllic Alpine surrounds of St Virgil, seems to have held some similar promise, and I avidly followed the tweets from those attending the conference. Although I wasn't physically present, I at least managed to get a flavour of the event, and saw some twitpics via Twitter.

My attention this morning was drawn in particular to a very relevant paper from the conference presented by Wolfgang Reinhardt (@wollepb), Martin Ebner (@mebner), Gunter Beham (@kamelg) and Cristina Costa (@cristinacost), entitled 'How people are using Twitter during Conferences'. The authors make some interesting points and attempt to summarise the uses of Twitter as essentially a backchannel for the reportage of live events. They make an interesting point that Twitter can be used for the fast exchange of thoughts and ideas as well as information exchange. They also warn about the distractive tendencies of microblogging and the potential for it to socially isolate some individuals. Here's the conclusion in full:

Microblogging at conferences seems to be an additional way of discussing presented topics and exchanging additional information. It is not limited to the face-to-face audience or the location of the conference. Microblogging rather allows virtually anyone to actively participate in the thematic debates. Our research shows that several conference speakers and attendees are using Twitter for various purposes. Communicating and sharing resources seem to be one of the most interesting and relevant ways in which one microblogs. Other microblogging practices in conferences include following parallel sessions that otherwise delegates would not have access to, and/or would not receive such visibility. Content attached to tweets was reported to be mostly limited to plain text and web links.

To further research on microblogging in conferences, we will have to work closely together with organizers of conferences as to better promote microblogging as an information channel directly associated with the event. Sending out links to the survey during or shortly after the conference seems to be a crucial point for later examination, as people have mostly filled out the surveys during the days of the conference.

Reference: Reinhardt, W., Ebner, M., Beham, G. and Costa, C. (2009) How People are using Twitter during Conferences. In V. Hornung-Prähauser and M. Luckmann (Eds.) Creativity and Innovation Competencies on the Web, Proceedings of the 5th EduMedia Conference, St Virgil Conference Centre, Salzburg, Austria. p. 145-156.

Link: Twitter as a conference backchannel (by Tony McNeill)

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Can anybody hear me?

To say I'm disappointed is an understatement. I was due to speak at the roundtable event tonight for Educamp, alongside Martin Ebner, and as those of you who were listening discovered, the technology failed me at exactly the right moment. What can you do? I came in two hours early, tested out the system. The institutional network locked me out. I called my tech guys, who did a stirling job trying to find out what the problem was. No access to Elluminate. Proxy error or firewall problem. They couldn't resolve it. Eventually, bless 'em, they logged me into a specialised system - known as the access grid - which was open with no networking restrictions. It worked. Hooray! I was able to upload my slides, and even tested out the radio microphone I was given. The sound quality was good. All set to go. I walked back up the stairs to my desk for a quick cup of tea before the session started.

Back down in the access grid, I waited for my cue to speak.... the microphone was dead. Like an idiot, I frantically tried to get the sound working. The tech guys had gone home. I was on my own. More than 3 dozen people were waiting to hear me speak and I couldn't make myself heard. Could I try sign language? Useless. Maybe semaphore? Waste of time. Chat messaging on Elluminate was working OK, but not the best medium for presenting a live talk. Morse code would have worked if I knew how to read/write it (and if the audience knew it too). Other forms of language came to mind during the technology failure, none of which are actually printable here. Could I try ESP? How about crab language? Grand Opera? I tried rebooting the computer. Big mistake ... I lost Elluminate completely (again).

Oh the irony! I'm suspicious that the institutional gremlins conspired against me, because my topic was none other than ... Edupunk! Here's my slideshow 'How Edupunk can save the World.' And here are the points I wanted to make:

1) Edupunk is a philosophy deeply rooted in the belief that educators can 'do it themselves', and use tools that are open, 'free' and non-proprietary. It's a movement against the commoditization of learning and against corporate profiteering. It is not just about selecting open tools and technologies. It is also about the freedom to choose the methods of teaching that are open and student centred. I would even go as far as to claim that Edupunk teachers should be challenging the curricula they are required to teach, and especially the assessment methods that are imposed from on high. These are the structures that constrain education and stop learners from achieving their full potential.

2) Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) and in particular Learning Management Systems (LMSs) contribute toward restrictive practices in education and constrain both learner and teacher to operate within a model of learning that is insitutionally beneficial, but does little for the learner themselves. VLEs are generally difficult to use, with far too much effort needed to be put into understanding how the system works, to the detriment of the time and effort spent actually learning.

3) An exemplification of Edupunk philosophy is the rise of the personal learning environment (PLE) in which the learner selects his/her own tools and technologies to apply in formal and informal learning. Typical PLEs will incorporate a social networking service, reflective and collaborative tools, e-mail and a mobile device. I use a mashup of wiki (shell to aggregate all tools and provide a collaborative space), blogs (reflective tool and mind amplification space) and Twitter (microblog to update and inform and also to receive ideas and contact from others with a similar interest to me). I also use my wireless laptop and iPhone as communication/end tools.

4) Edupunk is more than 'do it yourself'. It is also a counterculture against corporate control and exploitation of learning, and brings the punk band (the teacher) closer to the audience (learner group). It is unashamedly anarchic and harks back to the concept of 'deschooling society' first proposed by Ivan Illich in the 1970s. Illich famously argued that we don't need funnels (directional learning through institutional control) but webs (multi-directional, hyperlinked learning that can be tailored by the individual to her/his own needs). Rhizomatic approaches to learning fall into this kind of philosophy.

There. That is what I would have said if the technology had allowed me. I got it off my chest. It's a shame that my rant on Edupunk has to end up here as a two-dimensional diatribe, rather than as a round table discussion with a live audience. On this occasion the technology amplified the distance, but hopefully this blog post will narrow the distance again, and that readers will contribute to a semblance of debate through the comments box below. Over to you...

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