calling all University of Leicester and DMU tweeters #cake

It’s been really great to see the tweeting community grow and make some solid links between DMU and University of Leicester, links held together by #cake, of course. I thought it was time to say hello to a few tweeps that have appeared on the scene.

If you haven’t already, can you please add yourself to the list using this google form?

Results will be automatically added here as a list of Leicester Univ and DMU Twitterers

Tweet up fixed for Friday 12 November 2010, 2pm in the David Wilson Library Cafe. If you haven’t come along before, we will be the ones with iPod touches, netbooks and of course #cake. We all pretty much look like our avatars, including Gareth @llordllama 🙂

Tweeting links and bookmarking on the iPod Touch

I was trying to reply to Ann Marie’s question about how to tweet URLs from safari on the iPad, iTouch or iPhone, when I realised it wouldn’t fit into 140 characters. So, here is the longer version, I use several different  methods:

1. Bookmarklet – This is a way to edit the bookmarks that you can save in Safari on the iTouch. The one I use came as a suggestion with the original Tweetie when I downloaded it as an app. Here is how to do it (mobile friendly page) I know you can also do this with twitterlator, but haven’t found if you can use it with Twitter for iPhone since twitter acquired tweetie as their official app.  The bookmarklet is easy to use, just click on the bookmark link when you want to tweet a link and click ‘post to tweetie’.

2. Via posterous – posterous.com is great for moving between platforms. Use the ‘+’ button on the safari browser to ‘mail link to this page’ and email the link to posterous. If you set up your posterous account to tweet, then email directly to twitter@posterousname.posterous.com, posterous will automatically tweet the link for you. Like this. (tip – save this email address in your iTouch contacts list to make it even quicker to email).

3. Good old copy and paste 😉  I usually use Tweetdeck or Twitter for iphone as my tweeting apps of choice, both have URL shorteners, so if you paste in a long URL, tap the shortener link, they will zap them down to size for you.

Anne Marie also asked about bookmarking – I know she is a delicious fan, and so am I. I use two methods:

1. I use the mobile site to bookmark on my iTouch. This is a regular bookmarklet on my safari that I use on my Mac and put on my iTouch by syncing my bookmarks across (no faffing involved with editing the java script here, the one on the Mac works directly on the iTouch once synced). Just like the tweetie bookmarklet, this is a simple click of the bookmarking page to push over to delicious.

2. Packrati.us is really useful for bookmarking tweets with URLs. I started collecting everything I tweeted, but found it got too messy and I ended up with a lot of untagged bookmarks. So I used the very flexible settings to only copy URLs that I add the hashtag #bm and then any other relevant delicious tags. So I usually retweet something of interest (which also serves to forward it to my network on twitter) and add the relevant tags. This works really well. See what I’ve bookmarked so far using this system. The tag ‘via:packrati.us’ is always added.

Second #ESTICT event on voting

We are pleased to announce the second ESTICT event to be held in Edinburgh on Thursday 29th April 2010. The venue for the event is the centrally-located eScience Institute (NESC) at the University of Edinburgh.

Professor Jim Boyle from the University of Strathclyde is presenting a keynote with the intriguing title ‘Truth, Lies and Voting Systems’ and we have invited a number of speakers to talk on a wide variety of topics relating to Electronic Voting Systems and their innovative use. A voting question design workshop will investigate writing EVS questions for different pedagogic purposes.

The agenda for the event

9.15 Registration and coffee

9.45 Welcome and Introduction

10.00 Keynote: Prof. Jim Boyle, University of Strathclyde. ‘Truth, Lies and Voting Systems’

10:45 Coffee

11.15 Scaling up EVS – Some approaches, pitfalls and solutions

11:45 Short Presentations

• Nick Bowskill (Glasgow) – ‘Shared Thinking as Group-Oriented Generative Learning’
• Martin Hawksey (JISC RSC Scotland NE) – ‘TWEVS – Twitter EVS’
• Carol Withey (Greenwich) – ‘PollEverywhere‘ (Voting by texting SMS)
• Marina Sawdon (Durham) – ‘Promoting long-term knowledge retention by use of Keepad Audience response system’

12.45   Lunch

13.45   Workshop: Writing EVS Questions for Different Pedagogic Purposes

14.45  Coffee

15:15   Workshop group reports & Summary/Discussion: Where next? Repositories? ESTICT’s role?

15.45 Review, Feedback & Close – including your feedback and ideas for the next event in Bath

Registering for the event
Please register online at the eScience Institute’s website via: http://tinyurl.com/register-estict-edinburgh

Travel, Accommodation and Maps
It is easy to get to Edinburgh by train, by flying and by car. There is some information on this available from the registration page above. The event organisers at the eScience Institute can also personally help you find accommodation should you want to stay overnight. In addition, we have created a Google Map showing the venue location, train station, route to venue and various local places of interest, cafes, etc:
http://tinyurl.com/estict-edinburgh

Leicester tweet-up today DWL cafe at noon #cake

Last September, Alan and I started a tweet-up to see how many people on and around the University campus we could gather in the David Wilson Library Cafe (cos there is both #cake and wifi there).

We managed a good number of bodies and so today it will be interesting to see if we’ve moved on at all. Unfortunately I can’t come along today, so I’m hoping that others will eat my portion of cake and that Alan will blog about what I missed. It has been great to see the network growing.

If you haven’t already, can you please add yourself to the list using this google form?

Results will be automatically added here as a list of Leicester Univ and DMU Twitterers

Too much fuzz with buzz ?

Google launched Buzz yesterday and I thought I better take a look I have a good presence online with ‘jobadge’ and like to try and grab the username when something new comes along. I had a few minutes to spare this morning, so at home on my iPod Touch, I went to go and create an account. I didn’t need to bother of course, google just pulled my gmail account username through. Which was nice and a bit spooky at the same time.

As with any new social network, I posted into the empty space and waited to see if I could find anyone to talk to. Nothing happened. Later on when I got into work I explored a little more but couldn’t find anyway to access buzz in my gmail, where I thought it should be. However, a quick searching for ‘buzz’ in my gmail showed me the two messages I’d posted, with a URL link to them both. I was skyping with Alan this morning, so I sent him the URL and he found he could comment on my post, without having Buzz enabled on his own account (I hadn’t realised that it was being rolled out to only some users, it’s not often I get something before Alan does ;-)). We could explore each other’s followers  and this led us to realise that if this network takes off, it opens up a whole mess of network and audience issues.

At the moment, I have three (major) distinct networks of people (yes in some places they overlap) : Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook. They represent two different aspects of my work and my social life. Google Buzz presented me with people to follow/be followed by from my gmail contacts. My gmail account is full of all kinds of stuff and I’m not really sure that it represents a distinct audience of any sort. I guess the networks may settle down, but since Alan, Stuart and I have been trying hard to keep a discreet student audience for some teaching we are doing, there is a danger that Buzz could mess this up horribly and blurr the boundaries we’ve been trying hard to maintain.

From what I’ve seen so far, on a Buzz conversation I broadcast on twitter, there is no realtime refresh on the Buzz web page, but notification via gmail. This is bonkers and will drive me mad – where is the button to turn it off? It seems that anyone who joins in the conversation gets the same gmail bacon as me 😦

From a first look, I’m confused and bewildered. #buzzfail. Was twitter like that to start with?

Emerging peer support networks on twitter #lff10

I had the weird experience of giving a presentation without actually being present at a conference yesterday. I pre-recorded by session for the Learning Futures Festival back in December and it was broadcast on 14 Jan 2010 whilst I was at home collecting my children from school. I am greatful to my colleagues for stepping in to be online to answer any questions about the project.

It was definitely one of the easier presentations I had to do, elluminate was straightforward to use and I had good support from the conference team. Below is a copy of the slides I used and the presentation will be available with audio and the chat commentary on the learning futures fesitval site until 14 Feb 2010 (registration for the conference is required).

This is a project we’ve talked about elsewhere and have published in ALT-N.

Do you come here often? The fleeting nature of communication in a 140 character World #durbbu10

I am in the snowy frozen north for the next two days at the Blackboard UK users conference in Durham. I am presenting our work on encouraging our first year undergraduates to think about their personal learning environments and how this may have influenced their means of communication with us as instructors on the course.

The presentation blends two projects that involved Alex Moseley, Alan Cann and Stuart Johnson (all at University of Leicester) and myself.

Abstract: A first year undergraduate IT and numeracy key skills module on Blackboard (v 7.3) delivered to over 200 students over two semesters has made use of innovative online assessments over the last 10 years. The IT section of this module was substantially revised in 2008/9 to assist students with the concepts and competencies of information literacy, ultimately leading towards the construction of a personal learning environment (PLE) and a reflective e-portfolio (Badge et. al. 2009).  This was achieved by the introduction of freely available Web 2.0 tools. All the course content is delivered wholly online, including marking (EMCQs,  see Cann, 2005, Google Documents, delicious, Google Reader, see Badge et. al. 2009)  and feedback (via YouTube videos).  A Blackboard discussion board has supported this course as a place for students to ask questions about the content and any administrative details since 2002. For the first time in 2008/9 we introduced Twitter to the course and students were encouraged to use Twitter to ask for help. The discussion board was still available but questions posed here were markedly less than in previous years (~100 messages per year previously, this year, zero). A small cohort of students used Twitter to ask questions about the course, stimulated in part by our study on Twitter and the student experience (Cann et. al. 2009). Now in the second year of using Twitter to support this course, this has become an accepted channel for students to contact the convenor. The discussion board is checked regularly but has not been used at all by students this year. Despite this course requiring students to access Blackboard at a minimum of twice per week, students are still not using it as a communication channel. How does this plethora of parallel communication channels affect the way staff/students will interact with Blackboard in the future? How will adding Google Wave to the mix affect things? Where is Blackboard in the era of the realtime web?

References:

Cann, A., Badge, J., Johnson, S., and Moseley, A. (2009). Twittering the student experience. ALT-N, 17.

Cann, A. (2005). Extended matching sets questions for online numeracy assessments: a case study. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, pages 633-640. Citeulike citation

Badge, J. L., Johnson, S., Scott, J. S., and Cann, A. J. (2009). Encouraging lifelong learning habits in a web 2.0 enabled PLE. In Higher Education Academy Annual Conference. CiteUlike citation

Enhancing learning through Web2.0 #CfBweb2

We are hosting a HEA Centre for Biosicence event at Leicester in December.

Enhancing learning through Web2.0

Wednesday, 16 December 2009

Medical Sciences Building, University of Leicester

Web2.0 technologies continue to grow, both in diversity and usage and have the potential to impact all areas of learning. How can a bioscientist navigate the technologies of Web2.0 and why should you bother? The Centre for Bioscience would like to bring together examples of Web 2.0 which enhance student learning or academic scholarship. The day will advocate useful approaches rather than advocating particular programmes and be aimed at the novice to moderate user of Web2.0 tools.

Follow this event on Twitter at #CfBweb2 to follow Centre tweets on Twitter or consider joining Twitter.

The Centre hosts a social network site, UK Centre for Bioscience Pilot Social network, to explore the potential of using Web 2.0 with academics in bioscience education in UK HE. Give it a go!

Full programme and registration

Is Dawkins really tweeting?

I was amazed today to see a piece in Cell about whether scientists should twitter. In it David Bradley compares his twitter following to that of two celebrity tweeters, ‘Richard Dawkins has almost 25,000 followers on his Twitter feed; the actor Ashton Kutcher has 3.8 million‘.

I wrote very excitedly about the appearance of @richard_dawkins back in 2008. I thought that his appearance on twitter would legitimise the medium for scientists and encourage others to experiment with it.  Unfortunately, I got a stock publicity comment on the blog from ‘dawkins’ and it was shown to be an imposter. So I checked back from the Cell article today and I was rather surprised to see that the account was still alive and had such a big following (25,879). I assume that this is the account to which David refers, since it has just over 25,000 followers. Interestingly @richarddawkins has almost as many followers (17,680). The latter links to richarddawkins.net the former to Richarddawkins.com. Neither twitter account has a ring of authenticity to it, no conversation, just broadcast. Both could easily be simple ways to make a lot of money on amazon click through ads, but my money is on @richarddawkins as the legitimate source (richard_dawkins follows some suspect peeps and as much as we would all like to see Dawkins following The Official Jesus, and God, I can’t quite see it happening).

So, two accounts, neither embracing twitter in any way other broadcasting.  What a shame and a wasted opportunity to engage.

Trying to get to grips with FriendFeed

Cameron Neylon came to talk at a  genetics departmental seminar yesterday. Alan and I have followed Cameron on twitter for a while and so it was an ideal opportunity to meet him through Mummi Thorisson who had invited Cameron to speak. Several of us amplified the event on twitter using #uolneylon.

Cameron talked about dealing with information overload in science and while the audience may have not been openly receptive to his thoughts, he certainly made me stop and think.

Alan, Mummi and I all went for a curry after the talk for some regular face to face networking. We talked about a lot of things, including, teaching science and how to encourage our colleagues to change their networking practices, the nature of science and how it should be conducted, open notebook science, open publishing, REF/ impact scores/ research IDs and FriendFeed.

I have struggled with FriendFeed since I first signed up back In February 2008. I get facebook, I live in twitter, I love delicious, I’m trying hard to be disciplined about using citeulike (but have to admit that it is reading papers that I struggle with not bookmarking them!). I like to think that I am web 2.0 savvy and will try any new service passing. However, FriendFeed leaves me cold. It took Cameron to make me realise what was wrong. I have the wrong network on FriendFeed. The people I’ve subscribed to were suggested by the system because they are in my twitter network. However, very very few of them are resident in twitter (@daveowhite has a lot to answer for in my massive overuse of that word, but it is oh so succinct :-)). Finally I get it. The conversations I am looking at on FriendFeed are mostly not happening IN FriendFeed, they are autoposts from elsewhere. I need to move into FriendFeed and talk to a different bunch of people. Just as I have my facebook peeps, I can have FriendFeed peeps. The light has dawned. I can find a third audience to converse with.

So, I am starting to unsubscribe from anyone who is posting only their twitter feed into FriendFeed because I can (and do) have a conversation with them on twitter. I suspect I will soon need some new people to subscribe to, that are resident in FriendFeed, so come and say hello! Finding a whole new group of people to talk to is going to be fun.