Archive for the ‘web2.0’ Category

social media – sometimes a lens darkly?

Sunday, April 17th, 2011

Social media as a platform, supports communication and connectivity and is fairly instantaneous and generally public. It has become a popular avenue for individuals to share news, ideas, resources, and spruik their personal opinions. For reasons explained below, I’ve felt compelled to pen a few words regarding a (darker?) side of social media that I find rather sad. In so doing I may just be suggesting that social media exposes the darker side of human nature in a more public way. All the more reason to provide guidelines and models of best practice for people in the workplace and our educational institutions.

Social media apps

There’s been plenty of mainstream media coverage of recent Skype, Twitter, and Facebook controversies in Australia, where people have made inappropriate and immature comments about others that are disappointing and embarrassing. While I find aspects of this unfortunate and disturbing, I understand that it may be simply reflecting what may often happen in a smaller sphere, and not out in public. What surprises me is that the people getting up to this sort of behaviour should know better. Are people more inclined to act this way because they can hide behind their social networking software and not have to say things to someone’s face?

I admire that TV shows such as Q&A invite the participation of social media into the program and allow the audience and viewers to comment. I believe this can be a good thing, but I find that it also encourages and provides a platform for people to take a cheap shot, or be critical without backing up their position. Maybe I’m being naive, but I wonder why there seems to be too much of a willingness to slag off and polarise. I’m not sure if the motivation is to express an alternate view, seeing how clever they can sound, or just to draw attention to themselves. This bothers me enough to the extent that I don’t even want to watch the program, let alone follow the #qanda hashtag. I’m not for a moment suggesting that there are no useful, thoughtful questions and comments that people do make, it’s just the other stuff detracts from the conversation/discussion and often isn’t funny.

I suppose my point is that it can be difficult (but not impossible) to have useful & wholesome debate using social media, it’s just that it often seems to be a bunch of people making noise that irritates, like a dog barking away behind a fence. I’m thankful that at least I can choose not to listen… What do you think?

Oh, and if you’re after some guidance on how to use social media and participate in social networks there’s no excuse as there’s plenty of resources…

Telstra’s 3 Rs of Social Media Engagement

Intel Social Media Guidelines

Framework Social Media Guidelines | Australian Flexible Learning Framework

Enterprise: A List of 40 Social media Staff Guidelines (Laurel Papworth)

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it about how you use the (web 2.0) tool, not the tool itself

Friday, July 30th, 2010

This week I was fortunate to be able to attend a seminar presentation by Associate Professor Matthew Allen, called “Using Web 2.0 in Your Teaching”. Matthew is a Teaching Fellow of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council and is the leader of the ‘Learning in Networks of Knowledge‘ (LINK) project.

Matthew emphasised that Web 2.0 is about connection and stressed that when thinking about Web 2.0 we need to take into consideration the 4Cs.

    • Components: what feeds into the knowledge work system
    • Cognition and Collaboration: thinking and working together forms the processing system
    • Communication: the results of processing become public and the basis of audience reception and conversation

      Matthew presented us with his top 10 Web 2.0 tools and gave us some great ways to use them for learning & teaching. It was useful to be reminded that it’s not about the tool, it’s about what you can do with the tool. Here’s his list – I was surprised that I was only familiar with only two of them. They may not all be mainstream, but they could add value to the learning activities/ experiences you develop.

      1. xtimeline – xtimeline enables users to create timelines of events, in a constrained but flexible format, with collaboration features, and public communication options
      2. listphile – “a powerful tool for organizing and collaborating around structured information. Call it a database tool, if you will (but please don’t scare anyone away)” [**I couldn’t access this link today, but will check again later]
      3. slinkset – slinkset creates social news sites, private, shared or public like digg, with extensive yet simple to use design features
      4. posterous – posterous is a powerful yet simple blogging engine with a particular emphasis on ease of posting: do it by email
      5. mind42 – Mind mapping is … about entering ideas, arranging them … and refining and deepening ideas with colors, links and other attributes”
      6. quizlet – quizlet is a flashcard production and use system, with inbuilt group and collaboration features and innovative ways of testing knowledge
      7. reviewbasics – reviewbasics is a web-based service allowing users to work together to review documents, websites images with an emphasis on annotation
      8. springnote – “wiki, word processing, and file organization [and] … sharing, having collaborators… to organize all the information you need at your fingertips”
      9. knol.google – knol is Google’s answer to Wikipedia: editable, classified user-generated content based on the idea of a ‘knol’ (a unit of knowledge)
      10. wiggio – comprehensive group collaboration tool: calendars, to do, sharing, online meeting and polling … people work as teams, not a group of individuals

      You can also access the presentations on each of the tools on Slideshare, and a video recording of Matthew’s presentation capturing his discussion on each of the tools. You can follow Matthew on Twitter and read more of his work on his website (look for ‘writing’ tab).

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      augmented reality software/applications and educative possibility

      Monday, September 21st, 2009

      I’m just staring to understand the applications/technologies underpinning what’s being called augmented reality. Lots of fun, amazing to see and a high potential for use in education. I had seen some of this stuff before but didn’t quite get it even though it’s been around for a while. I’m not drawing parallels or comparisons to (immersive) 3d virtual worlds as I think that they are a different application of (augmented) reality (or do you think they should be considered in the same genre of application?) I’m interested in the application of this in education and how it might support authentic learning experiences that help build students’ understanding.

      Here’s a video of a demo of a free (cross platform) application from ARSights to take you on a tour (via a collection of models linked in Google Earth) of some of the significant landmarks around the world on your desktop. All you need is the marker (use the same cutout for all models) and a camera connected or built into your computer. You can also download the models from via Google Earth and view them at your leisure

      Having someone demonstrate an application to me (drum sequencer) I’m starting to understand that there could be significant educative value of this technology. Basically it’s a visual marker recognition system that uses a camera to ‘read’ a marker (a bit like a QR code) that then overlays a 3D image of the object on the card that is viewed on the computer screen. These can moved/shifted around to change the output of the sequence, a little like the concept of siftables demonstrated during a TED Talk by David MerrillThe interactivity is important to note, as it adds a another dimension to this technology as suggested by this quote from d-touch website:

      “The distinctive feature of d-touch, compared to similar systems, is that the markers can be visually designed to convey meaning to people. By allowing the creation of markers that support interaction both visually and functionally, d-touch can enhance most applications normally supported by visual markers, including interactive guides, mobile service access, mobile games, interactive story telling systems and augmented reality applications that have broad visual appeal and are not constrained to ugly glyphs.”

      The video below shows a demo from d-touch and a drum machine ‘reading’ the markers to play a sequence.

      These technologies is also being developed for mobile devices with some clever and useful applications. The demo below is nearly too cool to believe!

      There must be any number of possibilities for education, eg. 3D models for architecture, medicine, chemistry, biology, etc. Are you aware of any other demonstrations/applications of this type of technology in education that you could share? … and what of uses for mobile devices?

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      it’s only because of twitter that…

      Monday, May 18th, 2009

      I gave a presentation last week at the ARK Group, “eLearning and Instructional Design” conference. My talk was focused on the capacities of Web 2.0 and I spent some time on the topic, The world at you door, tools for developing your Personal Learning Network (PLN). The areas I covered included social networking/forum websites, blogging and micro-blogging. I mentioned applications/services such as Twitter, Yammer, Ning, Elluminate, Wikispaces, Wetpaint, WordPress & Blogger.

      I told my own story with regard to the way particular technologies and applications had supported the development of my PLN (while I’m calling it a Network, the term Environment is also appropriate – check out Britt Watwood’s blog post where he reflects on his notion of a PLN and provides a nice graphic to explain it). To demonstrate the value and power of the Twitter aspect/component of my PLN, it was fun (and surprising to myself) to be able to say;

      “It’s only because of Twitter that …

        • I’m here talking with you
        • I have an international network to draw on (immediately)
        • I have become part of communities of practice
        • I know @AnneBB (and others)
        • I found a place to eat last night
        • I’m having dinner with some tweeps tonight”

          Some members of the audience may have thought to themselves that to be able to give these examples was all a bit sad, and that Twitter was running my life. It may seem that way, but Twitter has provided me with many opportunities to meet people face to face and enabled friendships to grow as well as develop my professional understanding of the way we might use the affordances of tool like Twitter for learning and teaching.

          After all, I recognise that Twitter is still only one dimension of my PLN, but it is a very valuable one. I haven’t done the exercise, but with the traditional tools such as email, academic journals, and conferences etc. I’m sure my PLN would have taken years to develop, rather than months.

          Now to do some evangelising and convince some colleagues to ‘get on board’. Any suggestions from you as to how I might do that?

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          to tweet or not to tweet, and if I do, therefore I am, & now you know…

          Sunday, March 1st, 2009

          Social networking has been in the news lately, and there have been quite a few comments in the media recently about Twitter and micro-blogging. Seems the mainstream journalists are finally getting a sense of what a lot of us are already aware of. Amongst others, last week’s article in the A2 section of The Age, Tweet and greet, highlights how popular it’s becoming. I’ve been caught up in the phenomenon and wanted to share some thoughts and write a little about my experience. I have found that I haven’t been writing (longer) blog posts as regularly as I would have liked, I think this is because I’m spending more time interacting on Twitter. Maybe I don’t write well, or provocatively enough, for people to comment on my blog posts, and I find the feedback and response from my Twitter network more numerous and immediate. In the end though, I suppose it’s about purpose, priorities and time.

          Twitter continues to amaze me in how it can help you find answers to questions, provide a plethora of online resources (supplied by those you follow), facilitate the development of your network, and give you a stream of news and updates. I’ve been tweeting for a year now and Twitter’s been good for me professionally and socially. It’s nice when you can help someone see its value and watch them become a regular tweeter.

          I suppose the point I wanted to make was, that when I show people Twitter, they often don’t understand it and suggest it’s a waste of time. Now, I can agree with that, but it’s like many things – the more you put in to it, the more you’ll get out of it. Understanding, and using Twitter effectively is about gaining experience and learning by doing, which generally works for most people. Britt Watwood in his blog post Am I an Outlier? reflects about the necessity to ‘practise’ doing something to become successful at it. This is true, but I believe it’s also about being able to make the experience more than the sum of it’s parts. To do this you need to be able to add value by taking risks. Putting yourself ‘out there’ can often pay dividends. Interaction is the key, so you need to respond to others and even pose your own questions, be provocative and ensure you make a contribution. Sue Waters has often written of the value of commenting (on blog posts) – this is when interaction happens and a dialogue between (often more than two) people develops an idea further than the initial writer intended.

          As an example of this serendipitous adventure, it was fun to read a great story about tweeps (a couple of fans and the Shaq) catching up with each other f2f. Other blog posts regarding Twitter that I’ve read recently include Chris Betcher’s ‘Twitter is messy’, and Jenny Wood’s, ‘a Twitter reality check’, and there’s a very recent TED Talk, How Twitter’s spectacular growth is being driven by unexpected uses, given by Evan Williams (the co-founder of Twitter). The amount of data collected by Twitter is huge, and it’s all searchable, just use your imagination. There are also plenty of small applications that will return data on all sorts of Twitter usage, and they’re good fun to explore.

          Please let me share just one of my own Twitter stories with you… I was attending a conference recently and tweeting about it, when I received a tweet from someone else (’Jo’) in the audience who said that they would like to meet me and asked where was I in the auditorium. I was about to answer (“Down the front left”, etc.) when I thought I’d check their bio and visited their website/blog. As the blog opened on my screen, there was some chatter from the across the aisle and I was told by the person sitting across from me that I was looking at her blog. The penny dropped, and I asked, “Are you Jo?”. “Yes”, she said. With the biggest grin, I said, “I’m Colin!”. Twitter made it possible.

          I’ve also initiated the use of Yammer (microblogging within a domain) at my workplace, and after a couple of weeks we’ve got some interested people joining up, interactions beginning, and a few groups starting to form. I’m also encouraged by questions asking how we can use this technology with our students and in research…

          So, what’s in it for me (or you)? You usually get a return on investment (except maybe during the current financial crisis), so if you haven’t, have a go and spend some time and energy on investigating the possibilities of micro-blogging and network building for yourself.

          So, Twitter is topical and if you’re not sure what it’s about, you might want to do a quick Google blog search to find plenty more for you to read (or you might even check out my delicious bookmarks), or take the plunge and signup to Twitter and start tweeting and find some like-minded people to follow. Oh, and in case you’re not following me yet, I’m @colwar in the twitterverse…

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