Back Up Out Of The Twitter Rabbit Hole And Other Musings...

Hard to believe that it has been almost six months since my last blog post - I truly did fall down the Twitter rabbit hole - was (and is) to type out that quick and witty (well I think they are witty) 140 charcter stream of consciousness than it was to sit down and think of something almost sensible to say...

Another advantage of Twitter is that with TweetDeck, I could kill two birds with one stone - tweet and post to Facebook (in fact other than Birthday greetings, I have not used the Facebook interface since I installed TweetDeck almost a year ago...).

While I find Twitter a good way to stay in touch and to get info - depending on who you follow it's almost a "headline" RSS feed - there is still very much room in my life for a blog and for other folk's blogs too (although I must confess I have not looked at Netvibes in months either - something I must get back too.

We're nearing the end of another full and busy academic year here at the College - convocation is next week and we are already in next year mode - seeing prospective students, looking at enrollment numbers (ours are great!), and all in all getting sorted out for another academic year - there is no longer any "down" time...

The two big pieces of tech news for me over the last few months are all Apple related - the release of the iPad and today's announcement of the new iPhone 4 - there is definiteky an iPhone 4 in my relatively immediate future, as for the iPad we have oredered some to try as teaching and learning platforms and to become more informed about their capabilities as we know students will strat showing up with them this fall.

I see the iPad as primarily a consumption machine, not a creation machine - Ira David Socol on his SpeEd Change blog has an interesting post on the iPad - check it out. I think the jury is still out on if the iPad can be successfully used as a learning tool in PSE - I suspect that in some programs it can and in some it cannot. I plan on using one this summer and fall as my " go to meetings" machine - note taking, file retrieval etc. I'll post on how it goes.

My cross Canada virtual trek continues - I think I'm somewhere in Saskatchewan I'll be updating those posts shortly - I did the Bluenose Marathon 5 KM walk/run this year for the third time - my goal was sub 50 minutes and I finished in a chip tine of 50:07.9 (shouldn't have tweetd at the 1 Km mark :-)). You can see my hard-earned medal above...

Well it is so good to be back up from deep in the Twitterverse - I've really missed that 141st character and all the ones that follow. Time to think and muse on what will be here next. Hmmm...

Who Needs 140 Characters? Less IS More

Some people I know feel restricted by Twitter's 140 character limit, others not so much - I'm in the former category, but I am getting better at being brief. In that spirit of new found brevity - I give give you Flutter!



Too funny - enjoy!

Blog or Twitter? Twit or Blogger? Will Ever the Twain Shall Meet? Hmmm...

I've been blogging now for over three years and I really like doing it - it gives me an outlet to say what's on my mind - literally the things that make me go Hmmm... But there is a new sheriff in town and that sheriff is Twitter.

I've been twittering (tweeting? the language is so cool :-)) for well over a year now, but until recently it's mostly been "Home after work", "it's raining out", "off to do laundry" - after all, the primary question that Twitter asks is "What are you doing?". But in the past few months I've noticed a change in how many of my friends (followers, followed?) are using Twitter. They are using it to share information, send links, talk about conferences or meetings they are attending (live in real-time too - very cool) and generally using it for lots more than just a "What are you doing?" tool.

Twitter has become a microblogging tool - a way to blog in 140 characters or less - now for those who know me, and for those who read my posts you know that getting me to say anything coherent in 140 characters or less is a herculean task :-). I'm like Blaise Pascal (or Mark Twain, or T.S. Eliot - someone said it...) - "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter". I was never one of those students who EVER had to worry about not hitting the word count on an essay assignment, and talking for 30 minutes is easy - it's the 5 minute speech that takes so much time.

For me that is the conundrum of Twitter and Blogging. It's easy for me to answer the "What are you doing?" question within the 140 character limit, but how do I say anything meaningful? That is a skill that I need to learn and to follow the example of several of my friends and colleagues who do an amazing job of saying meaningful things and sharing great stuff (stuff is the universal technical term) with Twitter.

I really like the real-time "live" nature of Twitter. When I attend conferences I blog the days events - keynotes, sessions I attend, things I did or noticed - it's my way of absorbing the day and reflecting on it (and a great way to share the experience too). With Twitter I can do that as it happens - now that is so cool - I just need to develop some concision (yes it is a word :-)).

The other piece that has made Twitter more relevant to me as an information sharing and discussion tool is the technology I'm now using. I've gone from a simple digital text-based SMS cell phone to an iPhone using an application called Twittelator Pro that gives me an easy way to "tweet" no matter where I am. With these tools I can connect live from anywhere. I'm off to a couple of conferences this Spring (one as a co-presenter - CNIE), and I plan on tweeting from both theoughout the day, and then blogging each evening on the day's events - to me the perfect combination of tools...

So is this the end of blogging as I know it? I don't think so - I will still write scads on things that make me go Hmmm... I will never be able to do that to my satisfaction in 140 characters or less. I still have the need to be wordy and verbose (sorry it's in my nature), but I see Twitter as a valuable addition to my tool set of information gathering and sharing and I can tell you that from now on when I tweet (yes I am a Twit :-)), it will be more than answering "what are you doing"? With Twitter I will be able to find and share information in real-time - then I can use my blog to expand upon (and dare I say pontificate) on those subjects that still make me go Hmmm... in more than 140 characters...

(Images - Twitter logo from Twitter.com and Blogger logo from Blogger.com)

Facebook Is The Malt Shop Of The 21st Century Or Where Do You Hang Out?...

This post is one from my To-Do list. Thought it was about time I got around to this - some thoughts on how we as a species, at least in the connected world, have changed how we meet people, make friends, and hang out...

When I was growing up we hung out at drive-ins, bowling alleys, hockey rinks, community centres, sports fields, and other real spaces. The people we met and the friends we made were local and we met face to face. I moved around a lot as an army brat and over the years lost track of old friends, making new friends at our new posting. Some you kept in touch with by letters, but I was (and am) a lousy letter writer. Our friends were "real" we knew their names and we knew what they looked like.

Welcome to 2009 and Web 2.0, virtual worlds, micro-blogging sites like Twitter, and social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Orkut (among literally hundreds), not to mention online dating sites like e-Harmony. The whole meeting, making, and keeping friends paradigm has changed. You can now meet people from all over the world, get to know them and create lasting friendships and relationships without ever meeting. Staying "in touch" is easy and is now pushed to your friends by simply updating your status. You can develop a deep or lasting relationship that once it becomes face to face (or "real" as some would say) continues to be stroong.

The question is can you be friends with someone you have never met? My answer to that question is yes. I know several people that I consider friends who I have never met face to face, yet our relationships are normal and friendly. I've met most of these people through Second Life, and some through Facebook. Some I have met face to face in the "real world", some I will probably never meet yet I still consider them friends and no less a friend simply because we have never met face to face. What sites like Facebook and Second Life have done is simply expanded my "First Life" - my social circles and networks are now global, not loacal...

Anna Pickard in the Guardian posted an article called "Virtual people, real friends" (thanks to Randommind for finding this). It's a great read and makes the point that you can have real friends with virtual people. In the article Anna says:

"The friends I've made online – from blogging in particular, be they other bloggers or commenters on this or my own site – are the best friends I now have. And yet, when I say this to people, many times they'll look at me like I'm a social failure; and when surveys like this are reported, it's always with a slight air of being the "It's a crazy, crazy, crazy world!" item last thing on the news. Some portions of my family still refer to my partner of six years as my "Internet Boyfriend".

Call me naive, but far from being the bottomless repository of oddballs and potential serial killers, the internet is full of lively minded, like-minded engaging people – for the first time in history we're lucky enough to choose friends not by location or luck, but pinpoint perfect friends by rounding up people with amazingly similar interests, matching politics, senses of humour, passionate feelings about the most infinitesimally tiny hobby communities. The friends I have now might be spread wide, geographically, but I'm closer to them than anyone I went to school with, by about a million miles.

For me, and people like me who might be a little shy or socially awkward – and there are plenty of us about – moving conversations and friendships from the net to a coffee shop table or the bar stool is a much more organic, normal process than people who spend less time online might expect.

Depending on the root of the friendship, on where the conversation started, the benefit is clear – you cut out the tedium of small talk. What could be better?"

This is the new reality of where people are "hanging out" and meeting - many social places of my youth are gone or are no longer safe to hang out at - we have switched to an online world of common interests, acquaintances, linked friends (the real six degrees of separation), and online communities where we meet and make friends.

This new reality has implications for educators too - our learners are hanging out in these new online spaces, making friends, collaborating, defining relationships and creating networks. We need to understand how this works, understand that friends made in this new paradigm are just as real and just as important as any "real-world" friends and that these virtual friends will impact on learning environments and how we will relate to our learners.

As we move to more and more blended or online deliveries, many of our learners will only be known to us through their online presence. Does that make them any less a learner or are the friendships and relationships they develop with their classmates and us any less relevant or important? Hmmm...




(Photo - "Blast From The Past" by Steve_Tango)

When Does a Blog Become a Web Site?...

When does a blog become a Web site? I've been asking myself that question the last little while as I take a look at my blog and at the blogs of friends and those that I read on a regular basis. When I started writing my blog it was just that - a place to write down some thoughts - sort of a blank journal. It had a couple of extras - my profile, a picture of me and the Blog archive - neat, clean, no fuss, no muss.

Now look at my blog - at last count there were 19 different things, widgets, components, add-ons, whatever you want to call them - from links to blogs I read, my wiki, my Flickr site, my Facebook profile, blog aggregator sites like Technorati, Feedburner, Netvibes, PageFlakes, and EduSpaces. I can chat through Meebo and stay in touch with Twitter. I can tell how many people are reading my blog through ClustrMaps (come on people where are you?), and I even have pictures of my favourite bloggers on my blog through Feevy.

When did my blog get so crowded anyway? It all just sort of snuck up on me. The other thing is now whenever I set up a profile in Facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn or any other social media site, I always put my blog as my web site. I own a domain but haven't done anything with it (I really should) because I'm not a really big fan of "vanity" Web sites. But if you take a look at my blog - vanity thy name is...Me! Hmmm...

E-Mail Is Dead! Long Live ??...

This post "Is E-Mail On The Way Out?" from the Adaptive Path blog (you should add it's feed to your RSS aggregator ASAP), got me thinking again about the use and lifespan of e-mail. Is e-mail dead? Not yet, but I think it is starting to not feel so well. I still run my life with e-mail, it's my main form of business communication certainly, but there are other tools and technologies creeping in and my e-mail clients should be worried.

If I take a moment and look at all of the tools that I am using to communicate and share with people in my personal life, e-mail is probably now the least used tool - I use Twitter to update my comings and goings (but I need to get better at it), Facebook for just about everything that is me, Skype to stay in touch and communicate visually and by voice, Blogger to express and share my thoughts, Google Docs and Spreadsheets and Google Groups to collaborate, and many other tools and technologies as the mood strikes.There isn't any room for e-mail in my personal life anymore.

And to top it all off I get most of this information pushed to me, not to my computer, but to my cell phone - I am truly mobile.

Now I am not actually saying that e-mail is dead - it is still the tool I use and most people use for business communication, and I don't see that changing anytime soon, but as an educator I have come to see learners who don't use e-mail regularly if at all anymore (just ask them if they read that important announcement sent to their College e-mail account if you don't believe me). Learners are telling me that e-mail is dull and slow, that it's not immediate enough - they prefer IM or Facebook, or some other more immediate form of communication.

I asked a first year IT class to make a choice - do without e-mail, or do without Internet access - it was unanimous - 100% offered to give up their e-mail on the spot. Today's learners see e-mail as an old, tired technology; one that is not agile or immediate enough for their needs. As educators we need to be where are learners are, and to get there we need to embrace the changing technologies and engage with them - and you know I have - and they are right - e-mail is old and slow! I actually can go for days not checking my personal e-mail account, but I am on Facebook every day - it's one of my home page tabs...

So if e-mail is dead - what will replace it? Well whatever it is, I think it will be more open and social than the closed system of sending a message to a finite number of addressees. It may be Facebook or its successor, or twitter, or a combination of more than one tool. Whatever it will be it will be accessed more on mobile devices than computers, that I know for sure. The only thing that I haven't quite got my head around is how confidential matters will be handled, so maybe there will always be a small corner in the room for e-mail or its closed successor. Hmmm...

(Photo - "Tools of the Trade" by tim_d)

My Web 2.0 Toolkit

I've been exploring and using all sorts of Web 2.0 tools and technologies for some time now and thought I would share the ones that make up my "Web 2.0 Toolkit". These are the Web 2.0 tools that I use pretty much everyday in both my personal life and as an adult educator. So, in no particular order, here they are:

• Blogging - Well - I'm obviously using Blogger, but Wordpress is pretty cool too
• RSS - I'm sold on Netvibes - it's become my number one source of online information - I literally get hundreds of feeds from it daily
• Pictures - Flickr and Photobucket. I use Flickr for storing and showing off my photos and Photobucket for my stock photos that I use on line. I also use flickrCC to find stock photos online (remember to abide by the licensing terms of the owners - msot use one of the Creative Commons licenses)
  
• Wikis - I have several different wikis now at wikispaces but pbwiki is a really good tool as well. Wikis are a great educational tool, particularly if you get your learners to maintain them. A good way to answer the question "What do we do now that the course is over?".
  
• Collaboration - Google Groups and Google Notebook. Two great tools from Google, I plan on using them to replace textbooks in my courses.
• To-do List - Remember The Milk is an easy to use to-do list that keeps me on track
• Calendar tool - Google Calendar - just about runs my life now, would be lost without it - and I can share my calendar too so people know what's going on with me.
  
• Social Networking - Facebook - a great tool for staying in touch, I'm in the process of setting up an alumni group for my former students
• Video conversions - Vixy.net is great if you absolutely must have a local copy of that favourite online video. A great tool if you don't always have a high-speed Internet connection
  
• Staying current - Twitter is a great tool for letting people know where you are and what you are up to although I do not use it nearly as much as some. I actually use the custom status messages in GMail more
• Conferencing - Elluminate's vRoom - a great free tool from Elluminate gives you all of the capabilities of Elluminate except for recording and a limit of three sites. Not really a Web 2.0 tool (try Vyew if you want a Web-based conferencing tool).
  

Well there you have it - my current Web 2.0 toolkit - I am sure that it will continue to evolve over the months to come and I'll do my best to let you know what I am using...

(Photo from David Babylon)