Betty Online – Time Out

Back on November 16, I wrote a blog post declaring my intention to give Twitter a try for a full month. Today I’m going to summarize what the experience has given me so far.

1) An amazing network of people: Initially I had a four people to follow from my short venture into twitter last spring; as I picked it up again I added a few more, and then a few more until I got up to a critical mass of about 29. At that point I figured out how to go to the twitter pages of the people I want to follow and check to see who they follow, so I found a few more and so on and so on. Eventually I got a tweet from MrTweet who’s bio says “I am your personal twitter assistant – add me as a friend, and I’ll suggest to you which influencers and followers you should check out. (More coming soon! ).” True to his word Mr Tweet somehow looked at who I had already decided to follow, checked out who they follow (are you following?) and recommended who else I should follow. I took his advice and now have 82 that I am following, with more being added as I find discover more people that I want to network with.

2) New tools for connecting: So Twitter probably wouldn’t work without good webtools to make it easy to keep up with. A month ago I was using Firefox but knew that there had to be an easy way to see tweets as they came in. Firefox wasn’t doing it.  Then Claire Thompson suggested Flock, so I downloaded that to give it a try.  Today I’m still using it though probably not yet to its full potential but I do like what it gives me. I can have twitter on in a sidebar, or switch to Facebook which I use more for my family network.  There is even the potential for network in flicker and possibly so much more.

A couple of weeks, or about 20 tweets, into my trial I started noticing some posts that said posted from Tweetdeck. That sent me off looking for Tweetdeck which I’m now using.  While I still often have my sidebar in Flock on, I find that using Tweetdeck at the same time works well. It provides a better system for reading back through past posts whenever I come back on line, a nice consistent alert systems, and system for sorting the posts more easily. There are still functions in it I’m just learning about but even in this simplified way I’m using it, I find it very useful.

There are still tools I need to check out and learn more about. These include twhirl and twitterfox (maybe I left my firefox browser to quickly). And who knows, if Santa’s good to me this Christmas maybe I’ll get to try using twitter on an ipod with twitterfon.

3) Increasing involvement: By far the most exciting result for me has been the fun I’ve had getting up the courage to participate in the interaction. Twitter offers a kind of light weight connection, if you will.  With it I’ve become involved in a network of people, many whom I’ve never met, but who have agreed by letting me “follow” them, and often “following” me back, to allow some conversation between us.  These are folks that I don’t know well enough to email out of the blue given that I’m a relatively shy person. But folks with whom I seem to have a lot in common such as an interest in education, specifically technology in education and/or online tools for communication and education. So more and more I’m finding myself willing to try a response or even (more daringly) a direct message in response to some tweet from someone else.  The first one I received was exciting; the first one I sent, a little scary. But more and more I’m having fun with it and really learning a lot. I’ve started engaging in conversations that I wouldn’t have joined into before. The next conference I go to I think I’ll be much more willing to step up and introduce myself.

4) Great new resource, blogs and updated information: Perhaps this is all just the benefits of an expanded network but with regular tweets coming in as people complete accomplishments from posting a new blog post to publishing a book, I’m finding myself much more up to date with relevant and important information.  I’m reading new blog postings much more immediately.  I’m learning about good tools and resources that fit well with my work.  For example, through Twitter I learned about Liz Davies revised edition of 21st Century Technology Tools; Tutorials for Teachers, 2nd Edition which I’m just settling in to read. You can be sure though that I’ll be keeping my twitter on while I read.

Let’s face it, I’m one of the converted.  I think about going back into a classroom and I wonder how I would do it if I didn’t have access to computers, laptops, a Smartboard, microphones, cameras and internet connections. I believe these “tools” are quickly becoming essential in today’s classroom.  They help to capture the imagination of the students, engage them in ways that we can’t otherwise, and allow for expression, connection and creativity in unimaginable ways. They offer authentic and fun ways to teach problem solving and critical thinking.

But what about teachers who haven’t yet experienced the thrill of watching students put together a powerful presentation, connect with classmates across the world, or conduct online interview with experts that they were able to track down and connect to all on their own?   How do you best introduce the possibilities? What would you start with to convince teachers who are relunctant to use technology to be willing to give it a try?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Is there a single article, blog, video or book that you’d recommend such a teacher start with?  Of course, it is also imperative to dive in at some point, but what would you use to encourgage someone to take the plunge?

Photo by DRB62 at http://www.flickr.com/photos/drb62/2474763910/.

So Phil Macoun,  in his recent comment on this blog, recommended I give Twitter another try in response to my commenting that I didn’t really get it. So I’m doing so, a full-on commitment to twitter for a month and see how it goes. Already you’ll notice the twitter widget in the sidebar. To date I’ve found 41 people worth following (including Barack Obama along with 135,841 other followers) and 27 people are following me. That’s not a bad start to a network, but in the end it really depends on what I learn, contribute and gain from it all.  As my real interest here is in how it could possibly be of help to overworked classroom teachers, the vote is definitely still out.

Claire Thompson, one of my new contacts from KnowSchools, has tweeted me already to check that I’ve got some system set up for managing all the tweets.  Of course, I don’t as yet but she’s pointed me in a good direction and so I’ve just downloaded Flock. I’ll give that a try. If social networking is the way to go, and Flock is better designed to support that, it is certainly worth checking out.

Watch for an update or, better still, follow along with this little experiment on twitter.

I’m often trying to do several things at once. I do a great deal of my work via email, keeping contact with students, mentors and colleagues. At the same time I follow several online discussion groups through SCoPE and KnowSchools, ETUG, VSS and so on, yet I seldom feel that I’m on top of everything. Last week, listening to several voice threads posted on a forum about managing online environments, I related to one fellow who described the constant push to get to “inbox zero.” While secretly congratulating myself on actually having a strategy that is considered viable by someone else, I questioned the wisdom of engaging in the process itself, probably because it is one in which I seldom achieve success. These days “inbox 99″ usually feels pretty good, which means I never really get there. I’m never caught up. And that is only with my online work.

Last week I finally got to reading a couple of chapters from Heather Menzies book “No Time: Stress and the Crisis of Modern Life.” After carting it about for several months hoping for a brief interlude in the demands on my time, it was oddly symbolic to find that Menzies is actually criticizing the online world of abstract communication for changing the pace of life and thus leaving us with no time. Tom Synder in his online review of Menzie’s book states it as the following:

A result of increasingly abstract communication, Menzies argues, is that the value of particular locations in time and space (a “space of places”) has been replaced by a “space of flows”, with data and symbols achieving primacy over lived experience.

To be honest, Menzies argument caught me off guard. Am I sacrificing quality for quantity through my participation online? Why am I so drawn to this venue for communicating and connecting with others? In education we argue that online environments open up new avenues for students to get real life, real time contact with experts. But is that all really just data and symbols? Are the real connections lost because it is online? How can we ensure that there is a quality and a reality, that time isn’t sped up through the whizzing of 1’s and 0’s through virtual space? How can we not be overwhelmed? These are good questions worth pondering. So now, rather than just making sure I am effectively “managing” my online environments, I’m slowing down and making sure that I am managing to have my online environments be effective in really contributing to my life, my time and the quality of both.

Dr. Jason Ohler spoke at the CUEBC Horizons conference. As expected, he was inspiring with his work with digital stories, but what surprised me was not what I gained in terms of motivation to get students and teachers using digital stories, but rather what I learned about visual literacy.

In fact, Ohler has really moved beyond speaking about visual literacy perhaps because in today’s context, literacy has to include visual literacy. He clearly defined literacy as being able to both consume and produce, considering not just text, but also form and colour. He talked about moving from words to collage, about the importance of moving from text centricism to new media collage; the value of learning to interpret and create web writing which is visually different text. He emphasized Art as the essential fourth R because it is part of literacy in our medial rich world. Multi media, he argued is the www esperanto, an intriguing concept. While he outlined nine essential guidelines for digital literacy, what struck me is that this kind of writing is different. It needs to be different. Even I read differently on the web. So my goal is to start finding ways to make my writing more visual. For someone like me who has truly denied my artistic abilities, this will be a challenge…. but something to work on.