Twitter, storytelling and serendipity

It's taken me a while to get around to writing about this so, with the ephemeral nature of Twitter, it has not been easy to piece this back together but I thought it was still worth a try.

I mentioned in Say hello to BEd Bloggers that I was working with a group of BEd students and trying to introduce them to social media and creative uses of ICT. In one session I wanted to introduce them to the potential of Twitter as a means of building a Personal Learning Network and, crucially, how it is a source of rapid feedback. One of the things I did was to send a tweet at the start of the session: "Talking to BEd students just now about Twitter. Why do you find Twitter educationally useful? Please let them know."

This worked reasonably well and within a short space of time, I had replies from other students, from teachers, advisers, and a depute rector. So far, so good. My intention was then to move on to creating a "Fortunately/unfortunately" story. This is a consequences style technique where one person begins a story and then people take it in turns to add a sentence. Each additional sentence must alternate between starting with "Fortunately" and "Unfortunately". It is quite a simple idea and I hoped by starting at one end of the class and each person nudging their neighbour when they had added their Tweeted sentence, we would quickly and easily build a story with multiple authors. I hoped it would let the students be creative within the strict confines of the fortunately/unfortunately structure but more importantly, I hoped it would show the easy flow of information on Twitter.

Unfortunately, it did not quite work out that way!

Here's how the story started with a Tweet from me and the next few Tweets that were generated by the students:

I was walking to school yesterday when a tree blew over in front of me. Fortunately, it landed a metre in front of me!

Unfortunately, it hit an old women who was too slow moving out the way. 

Fortunately, she had her hard hat on that her husband Bob gave her the previous day.

Fortunately, the students were all arriving for their 9am lectures and one particular student knew exactly how to save the day.

You can see how it goes. I accept that it it not going to win any prizes for literature but a story was being developed. The reason it was not going to plan was nothing to do with the story and everything to do with the lab I was in. The lab was full of old machines, with an old version of Internet Explorer, and frankly they are showing their age! Everything takes forever to do on these machines. Add to that the Internet and/or Twitter was also on a go slow that morning and my idea for a quick, creative, collaborative story-writing exercise went out the window. It took over half an hour to generate the four contributions shown above!

I felt it had all gone wrong. My learning intentions unmet and the students frustrated and scunnered by and exercise that was supposed to excite and inspire. Then something happened, which at the time I didn't fully appreciate but thinking about it later that night, I realised that while not what I expected, it was nonetheless a useful lesson.

What happened? It started with a Tweet from Christine McIntosh asking if she could join in the story telling. I replied that the story generation was intended as a student exercise but that she was welcome to join in as she felt fit.

 

After the second or third message had been posted by the students, one asked me, "Who's Christine McIntosh?". I explained she was a friend, a retired English teacher and Ewan McIntosh's mum. The reason they asked was that she had started pitching in:

"At the risk of being a pain, I'd say a striking first sentence is as important as a striking conclusion, whatever comes between. Like: 'The tree, when it fell, was shocking in its sheer enormity.'

Two of the first three tweets have changed the first person narrator to a third person.

#BEd2012 students: never write a boring sentence in story!

They've not hashtagged assiduously ..." 

Only four messages... but eventually I realised what a valuable contribution they had made. The story took longer to form than I'd intended but while that hadn't gone to plan, what the students got instead was a lesson in story telling from a skilled English teacher exactly at the point they needed it. In fact, never mind the students I got a lesson on opening sentences! 

So a real and timely demonstration of the value of a good Personal Learning Network. Excellent!

Glow Community Building

Attended a Glow meeting at the Stirling Management Centre today which was interesting for a number of reasons - not least of which was that it got me more enthusiastic about Glow than I have been for a while.

Normally, when at a meeting like today's, I would either capture notes live in a Word document or in a live blog. Today though I decided to use Twitter instead. I think it worked. capturing and reporting in short burst was useful. I wasn't distracted by thinking how to phrase stuff for the blog or sidetracked by pfaffing about with formatting. Also, some live interaction took place by tweet which is not easily achieved with a blog post. However, the problem is that I now have a series of disjointed Tweets instead of a coherent, archived, record of what went on.

My task for tomorrow is therefore to try and pull all my Tweets, supplemented with comments from others, into a coherent, blog post.

See you tomorrow... maybe!

Twitter let me down… sort of.

…Or Facebook comes to the rescue. While trying to put together a presentation, I was looking for a link to a site I half remembered. Since I needed an instant answer, Twitter seemed to be the obvious place to go.

day 207 - 24.03.2009 - so not ready
Originally uploaded by ardenswayoflife

Here's the message I posted on Twitter:

I think I've seen a photo project with people holding hand written notices in front of their faces. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

It didn't exactly draw a flurry of responses, so I reposted a short time later. One response came from gbrown057 who suggested the Bob Dylan sequence from Don't Look Back. This was good, but not what I was looking for. I in turn referred him to the Dylan message generator where you can add your own messages to Bob's boards. Both digitalmaverick and pkkelly half remembered something too but essentially, I drew a blank with Twitter on Friday night.

I decided to have another go on Saturday morning.The Saturday morning set of Twitter contacts might help where Friday night's lot failed but once again, despite repeating the message a couple of times, no answer was forthcoming.

Then on Sunday, Daughter Number 2 asked if the video she sent me was what I was looking for. This caused me a bit of confusion until she said Facebook. I was asking on Twitter but I'd forgotten that my Twitter messages automagically update my Facebook status. And four people had responded there: my sister, my daughter, a friend from university and a chap I've never met but made contact with through Flickr and a shared love of the music of Rush. They were all making suggestions and getting miffed that I wasn't responding.

Silly me. I had my answer… I was just looking in the wrong place. The suggested answers were:

• Daughter Number 1: All American Rejects: Dirty Little Secret. Interesting and is connected to the PostSecret site. Not what I wanted but an interesting project that I had forgotten about.
• University friend: Suggested A Vision Of Students Today. Again, it was good, but not quite right. (To coin a catchphrase.)
• My sister: Sent a link to a song of palindromes called Bob by Weird Al Yankovic Which was interesting since it's a parody of the Bob Dylan song that Gordon had suggested on Twitter.

However, the link that if it's not the one I was thinking of is at least as close as I'm going to get was sent by my fellow Flickr using Rush fan who suggested the Someone Once Told Me group on Flickr.

Lessons learned: two social media tools are better than one and sometimes you find the answer in unexpected places.

Any other lessons I should have learned? (Or any other suggestions?)

Personal Learning Network

From my earlier scepticism about Twitter, I find I am now pushing Twitter as a useful tool for teachers. How did that happen?

House Sparrow
Originally uploaded by Gordon McKinlay

It is experiences like Vote with Twitter that have convinced me... and the response I got today when demonstrating Twitter to some BEd students helped confirm it for me. Today I posted the following comment:

Say hello to a group of BEd student teachers and tell them an interesting educational website. #BEd4

The first response came in a minute after I posted this message with @katiebarrowman recommending Glow. In the space of half an hour, we got twenty responses. While these responses were coming in, I got the students to sign up for Delicious. By the time they were set up with Delicious, they had a whole pile of recommendations from Twitter to save to Delicious. Brilliant!

Thank you to all the people who responded on Twitter.

Have you got any success stories to share about how Twitter was useful in learning and teaching?

ECER 2009: Some thoughts (#ecer2009)

Introduction
It's the final day of ECER 2009 and I fully intended to go to an 8:30 session. I distinctly remember hearing the alarm. I remember switching it off... and then an hour later, I woke up again. Oops!

ECER 2009: Main Building
Originally uploaded by DavidDMuir

I went in to the University of Vienna anyway thinking I'd join the session after the first paper but when I got there, I had a closer look at the programme and realised the paper I was most interested in was the first one. Decided to write up some of my thoughts on the conference instead while it was still fresh in my mind.

Electronic presence
First, I'd like to echo what Graham Attwell said in his blog post. ECER is a major education conference with over 2000 people attending and thousands of presentations. Many sessions are delivered in parallel and in the case of ECER 2009 they took place in three, different buildings. The buildings were relatively close to each other but it would still take about five minutes to walk between the two furthest flung buildings. Add to that the sheer size of the programme, and almost inevitably you will miss things that would be good to hear. Some you will miss because you are choosing between two sessions that are happening simultaneously. But some you will miss because you just don't know they are on. The papers are organised under one of 27 networks. I mostly attended presentations in Network 16: ICT in Education and Training but tried to keep an eye on Network 10: Teacher Education Research too. I probably should have had a closer look at Network 27: Didactics - Learning and Teaching, and Network 6: Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures, and … But there are only so many hours in the day and in general I decided it was best to pick one Network and mostly stick to it.

However, this meant I missed a session on Digital Identity that sounded really interesting. I missed it because it was in Network 2: Vocational Education and Training (VETNET) - a network that I didn't consider looking at and, although I am interested in ideas of digital identity, it was not a search term I thought of using when searching the online programme.

How do I know it was on then? Because I saw Graham Attwell's Tweet about it and subsequently was directed to an online copy of the presentation by a Tweet from maresta. It would have been good to see more of this type of online activity but as Graham said in his excellent blog post, there were very few people Twittering from the event and, so far I have only found four of the presentations online: Grahams', Alana James', Norm Friesen's and mine. In contrast, there is the Scottish Learning Festival, an event mainly for teachers rather than educational researchers, where there was a small but active community posting material online (see for example SLF Live!). The organisers of the conference recorded some of the sessions - webcasting some of them live - and set up a Flickr pool for people to share their photos of the event. Even the TeachMeet fringe event at the Scottish Learning Festival generated more online content than the whole of the ECER conference!

Speculation
Why was the use of social networking tools at ECER so low? Graham speculates: "I suspect that the culture (or community) of educational research has not yet embraced these technologies." I wasn't convinced by this and offer CAL '09 as a counter example. There was a reasonably active Twitter presence at CAL, a Cloudworks page was set up during the conference, the organisers had set up a graffiti wall where messages could be posted electronically to be viewed in the poster presentation area and you could email photos to share with others. Perhaps Andy's comment is closer to the mark. It may be that social networking tools are yet to have a big impact elsewhere in Europe. It will be interesting to see if next year's ECER is better represented on Twitter and elsewhere.

Conclusions
I didn't mean this to be so grumpy and I originally intended to talk about some of the sessions I attended. It was a good conference. The facilities were good and the free wi-fi coverage excellent. I have plenty to think about, research to chase up and (hopefully) some contacts to pursue. So, I'd like to conclude by thanking the organisers and presenters. However, since it is unlikely that I will be able to attend ECER 2010, I hope the electronic coverage will be more impressive next year.

P.S. I finished this post at Vienna airport where there is good, free, wi-fi access to the internet and the hotel where I stayed also had free wi-fi. I have yet to find a UK airport offering free internet access and most of the UK hotels I have stayed at seem to charge too. I hope that as uptake of social networking spreads from the UK to mainland Europe, mainland Europe's enlightened attitude to wi-fi spreads to the UK. :-)

Fun On Friday #40: URL Shorteners

A short post this week as befits the topic...

Twitter, with its 140 character limit on message length, has fueled the development of URL shorteners. Here's an article that describes 5 Very Weird URL Shorteners.

Which one is your favourite?

Vote with Twitter

This is a follow up to my What do you think? post. I had loads of good suggestions from people, with many pointing out that Poll Everywhere can accepts votes sent via Twitter.

polling station
Originally uploaded by secretlondon123

I really like Poll Everywhere and have used it with small sections. The free account for 30 responses is perfect for an average class size. However, I am not sure I'll be able to get funding to use it in lectures with hundreds of students... which is a pity. I was pleased to note though that someone from Poll Everywhere noticed my Tweets and encouraged me to get back to them to talk about costs.

In the meantime, I thought that using unique hashtag on Twitter and counting responses would be a quick and dirty solution that might be good enough for on the fly straw polls. A couple of people suggested possible lines to pursue that didn't involve a full blown programming project involving Twitter's API, so I had a go... with minimal success.

First off the blocks was Stuart Meldrum who suggested pulling the RSS feed from a Twitter Search into a Google Docs spreadsheet. I got so far but couldn't work out how to pull in all the search results. I've published a copy, called Public TwitGraph, which hopefully you can look at. If anyone can tell me what's going wrong, I'd be very grateful.

Next suggestion I tried to follow was from Martin Hawksey who suggested using Yahoo Pipes. Again, I had a go and got as far as adapting someone else's pipe to produce a list of numbers that I thought I might be able to pull into Google Docs to add them up and draw a graph. However, I couldn't get the RSS feed from the Pipe into Google's spreadsheet. Curses! Thankfully, Martin is more skilled with Pipes and has managed to use a hashtag to draw a graph. Brilliant! Stunningly brilliant even!

I can't quite see how he's done it, and I'll need to play with it for a while to see if it scales up, but it looks very promising.

What I really like about all these solutions (or in my case, not quite working solutions) is that they are based on stuff that other people created... stuff that they willingly shared with the Internet community. Yet more proof, if proof is needed, of the value of personal learning networks, Web 2.0 technology, blogs and (last but by no means least) Twitter.

I'm off now to tile a bathroom... but tomorrow, I'll be playing with Pipes. :-)

What do you think?

Personal Response Systems are used in schools and universities to collect opinions, and answers from students. They work like the ask the audience system on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? I must admit that I wasn't sure they would be much use until I tried them in a lecture. The response from the students was so positive that I was convinced after one use. However, there are problems. Handing out and collecting the handsets, setting up the software and receivers etc. is all a bit of a pain.

put your hand up if you are having a good time
Originally uploaded by micn2sugars

It occurred to me that since I already have a Twitter backchannel going in many of my presentations, it might be possible to use Twitter to collect student votes.

What's the big idea?
It seemed such an obvious idea that I was sure someone must have already done it... So I spent most of yesterday evening failing to find what I was looking for. I thought you could ask a question and give a unique hashtag for each possible answer. For example, you could ask:

Do you think voting with Twitter is a good idea?
1) To vote Yes, Tweet: @ddm090820 #ddm001
2) To vote No, Tweet: @ddm090820 #ddm002

Something would look for the unique hashtags, count them and then display the votes cast. Simples! Except, I can't find anything that does it. I asked for suggestions from Twitter but nobody could come up with exactly what I wanted. Essentially, I want a free version of Poll Everywhere!

I got quite excited when I found TweetVolume. It seemed to do what was required... until I realised it used Google to search Twitter - not much use if you want real time reporting of the results. If only they had used Twitter Search instead of Google.

My next idea, suggested by Barbara007 on Twitter (in response to my pleas for suggestions), was to search for the tags myself and just count the results. I investigated this too but while Twitter Search tells you how long it took to come up with its results, it doesn't tell you how many hits it finds. I want to use this with groups of over 100 students, so scroll and count is not going to work!

Conclusion
It seems to me I have four options:

1. Talk the TweetVolume people into using Twitter Search instead of Google.
2. Get someone who knows about programming and APIs to write an app for me.
3. Find a live Twitter search tool that tells you how many hits it finds.
4. Give up!

...Unless you know differently. Any suggestions?

Meaningless babble... and a useful tool

I saw oodles of pointless babble about a report on Twitter messages today: Twitter tweets are 40% 'babble'. I'm guessing that some people have already leapt to Twitters defence, so I will content myself by giving an example of a valuable exchange I saw today.

And on keyboards...
Originally uploaded by DavidDMuir

Leon Cych, AKA eyebeams posted a tweet asking for alternatives to Garageband. I had a bit of a problem with the question because Garageband does so much. You can play music, be taught to play an instrument, create music, edit sound, assemble sound loops, create podcasts, mix tracks, ... However, I had a go (as DavidDMuir) and so did _misterG, Ntoll, russdev, jont, and Steve_Collis. As a result, in the space of an hour or so, Leon had a list of alternatives to investigate.

A good example of the 8.7% of valuable messages or fairly typical of what you get most of the time if you follow the right people?

And for the record, here's the list he assembled:

• Songsmith
• Jamtrax
• JamStudio
• Real World Remixed
• Audacity
• Mixcraft
• Cubase
• Propellerhead's Record

A brilliant mixture of online and offline, free and commercial, beginner and advanced!

Any others that you want to add?

CPD, Staffrooms and Twitter

A search of my posts on Twitter reveal part of my journey from ambivalence to acceptance. I am at the stage where I don't worry about it and just use Twitter as and when I think it might be useful. Sometimes it is useful, sometimes it isn't but the overhead of sending a tweet is so low that even if it doesn't work they way I'd hoped, I've lost very little by trying.

Staffroom Sink
Originally uploaded by Blue Square Thing

CPD in the Staffroom

At a Glow meeting earlier this week we were talking about Continuing Professional Development - specifically Online CPD with Con Morris. He has posted links and his Prezi online if you want to see what he was talking about but his observations and comments as he presented are what I want to talk about here. For example, he noted that some of the best CPD he ever had took place in the staffroom. There were always the staffroom cynics, and a huge range of non-education related topics were discussed (football, golf, the weather...) but the third year class that was driving you up the wall would also feature and suggestions, strategies and practical advice on what to do about it would follow. He quoted Roland Barth:

...the most powerful form of learning, the most sophisticated form of staff development, comes not from listening to the good works of others but from sharing what we know with others… By reflecting on what we do, by giving it coherence, and by sharing and articulating our craft knowledge, we make meaning, we learn.

[Can't find the original source but it is also quoted on the Escondido Union School District site]

Later, while talking about face to face CPD sessions he quoted "Lord if I die, let it be in a CPD session where the difference between life and death is imperceptible". I don't know who first said this but it contains a truth that will be recognised by anyone who has ever had to sit through a twilight hours development session. This was all part of a discussion about alternatives to face to face CPD.

Twitter as CPD

One of the alternatives suggested was Twitter. However, this lead to some sharp disagreement. One view was expressed that you had to ruthlessly weed out all the people who tell you they had kippers for breakfast and build a small, trusted list of people who tweet about education. However, another school of thought said it was like a staffroom: sometimes you talk about kippers and sometimes you talk about curriculum. If you exclude someone for talking about one you can miss good stuff about the other. At one point Con said something like (and I paraphrase here): "Don't go to Twitter with an agenda. I didn't go to the staffroom with an agenda and my experience was richer because of that."

What do you do?

Where do you lie in the Twitter as CPD discussion? Do you tend to follow most of the people that follow you or do you ruthlessly prune your follow list? If you prune, how do you decide who to keep and do you use tools such as Who The Tweet? to help?

Twitterfall: Now even more useful

The recent Apple RTC meeting was probably the most Twittered event I've ever been to. Search for #applertc and you will find hundreds of messages that were generated during the one and a half day event.

David stealing scones at
Apple RTC Meeting

Originally uploaded by tarannau20

We tried a few tools to display the Tweets in a back channel. First up was Visible Tweets which looks fantastic and was big enough to be seen from the back of the room. However, the problem was it was just too random! Ideally for a back channel, you want the Tweets to appear in chronological order.

Next we tried Monitter and TwitterCamp. I think, of the two, TwitterCamp looks prettier but the Tweets were just far to small to be read properly from the back of the room.

I sent out a Tweet for suggestions as to what we could use instead and within minutes, a number of people suggested trying Twitterfall. I tried it, I liked it and that's what we went with for the rest of the conference. Twitterfall is easily customisable and there are loads of things you can tweak. However, the tools to customise are both a blessing and a curse. Very flexible but therefore slightly confusing, intimidating even. It took quite a bit of fiddling to get a good combination of size and colours.

I was pleased therefore to see today in the Twitterfall blog that they have added a Presentation setting. Excellent! A useful tool has instantly become even better. I feel very guilty therefore to have left a comment on the blog asking for more!

Fun on Friday #29: Visible Tweets

I seem to be hooked on Twitter at the moment (although I'm not posting as much as I'd like). One of the people I follow shared a link to Visible Tweets:

Visible Tweets – Twitter Visualisations. Now with added prettiness!

It's an interesting concept. Very pretty and strangely hypnotic. Try it with a current search term. For example, as I write this, there's a fair amount of traffic about TeachMeet Midlands, so try a Visible Tweets search on #tmm09.

What do you think about Visible Tweets?

Fun on Friday #26: Twittersheep

Know who your friends are...

Twittersheep produces a word cloud based on the bios of the people following you (or anyone else for that matter) on Twitter. For example, here's mine:

Not surprisingly, teacher features strongly as does education and learning. Compare with Stephen Fry's flock (or at least the part that I could fit on one screen):

Interesting how strongly geeks and students feature! According to the Guardian's April Fool:

Currently, 17.8% of all Twitter traffic in the United Kingdom consists of status updates from Stephen Fry, whose reliably jolly tone, whether trapped in a lift or eating a scrumptious tart, has won him thousands of fans. A further 11% is made up of his 363,000 followers replying "@stephenfry LOL!", "@stephenfry EXACTLY the same thing happened to me", and "@stephenfry Meanwhile, I am making myself an omelette! Delicious!"

Perhaps not my most useful post but I think it counts as Fun on Friday. |:-)

Fun on Friday #25: Collider

I am not convinced that this serves any useful purpose but it is strangely fascinating and even beautiful. It is called Social Collider and claims to reveal connections between Twitter conversations.

TwtApps: Daft name? Great idea!

The twtApps site is really interesting. It describes itself as follows:

We develop simple, fun and useful twitter apps. Share them on Twitter, Facebook, email or any other social network. No accounts required.

And I think that sums it up better than anything I could write. I've had a quick play with a few of the tools on offer and I think they all show potential. The first one I tried was Twtvite - not an obvious name perhaps but it is an application that creates invitations to events and then tracks how many people say they intend to attend. Here's one I created earlier:


The next one I tried was twtPoll which lets you create simple, one question surveys. You can embed the question:


And then see the results.

The final application I tried was twtPets. You post a picture of your pet and invite people to vote for it. I posted a picture of Blue but unfortunately, he's not doing too well. :-(

What do you think? Any potential uses in school?

EduTwitter: What can I learn from Tweets?

I have mentioned before my ambivalence to Twitter as an educational tool (see for example Ask Twitter: Mobile phones in education). I tell people (assuming they bother to ask) that I am not convinced that Twitter is that useful a tool in schools. I really surprised myself therefore when I responded to a question by David Noble through his edonis project. Before I explain why I surprised myself, I think a brief digression to talk about the edonis project would be useful.

My social Network on Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and MyblogLog
Originally uploaded by luc legay

David Noble is currently working on an EdD with the University of Edinburgh. The focus of his thesis is: How are educators using the social web to develop their practice? One of the ways he is researching this is through the edonis project where edonis stands for "EDucator Online Impact Study". This three year project hopes to gather about 100 educators together in an onlinbe community to discuss issues, complete questionnairs and respond to questions on their use of the social web. I think this is an inspired idea. Rather than simply report on the social web in education, David has created an online community - to walk the walk as well as talk the talk. Excellent idea. He has not yet hit the 100 mark, so if you haven't already signed up, it's not to late.

(*Update: David contacted me on Twitter (appropriately enough) to say that as well as the people signed up on Ning, he has over twenty people participating by email. I'd still contact him though if you are interested - he may need some "spares". :-) *)

I responded last week to his latest request for participation. He asked:

I'd like you to recall and give brief details about a recent example of online communication between you and at least one other person, which you feel led to some kind of learning for you (professional or otherwise). You may wish to indicate: the way you communicated; whether it was in 'real time' or not; and how you found the experience.

I was surprised to find myself responding as follows:

Most recent was the Twitter exchange on digital natives. Which hopefully write up soon. Before that, it was probably another set of Twitter exchanges connected to questions my students had asked.

The nature of Twitter means it is geared to giving fasts responses and brief messages. This means I got a decent amount of feedback in a very short space of time.

I found the experience interesting. I would still claim to be sceptical of the educational value of Twitter, yet some of the best sites I've visited recently have come from links sent on Twitter and a number of blog posts have been triggered by Twitter exchanges, e.g. Can you guess what it is yet?

I am puzzled therefore as to why I am not convinced about Twitter in schools. I'm still reluctant to recommend it to students... but I recommended it anyway, most recently in a recent lecture to PGDE(S) students. I guess that's just another indicator of how deeply confused I am. :-)

So, I'm not convinced of it's value in education but it has contributed to my own learning. I'm not convinced of it's value to students but I recommend it to my students anyway.

I think I need to think it out again!

Ask Twitter 2: Information Overload

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a question I was asked and included some of the replies I got to the question when I shared it with my Twitter contacts (Ask Twitter: Mobile phones in education).

Information Overload
Originally uploaded by Monster.

Another question sent by text was: "Do you think the 'c' generation are at risk from communication overload?".

My response was:
I think we're all at risk... but as I said in the lecture, it is a risk we can't avoid. The children in school today have never known a time without the World Wide Web. The amount of information created every year is growing exponentially. That's the world they live in. The questions is therefore not "Are they at risk from information overload?" but rather, "How do we help them thrive in an information rich environment?" There are at least three responses: 1) Head in the sand 2) Headless chicken 3) Education I know which one I favour. :-)

A student added the following to my answer:

Perhaps the most important thing we can teach is how to apply sensible mental filters to the abundance of information out there. For instance, which sources are more likely to be reliable than others.

I thought I'd try Twitter again to get a wider range of views. Again, my comments and additions are shown in curly brakets.

derekrobertson @daviddmuir if the pseudo science brain people are correct they are only using 25% of their brains at the minute so plenty of capacity left! 12:11 PM Oct 23rd

{I suspect Derek was not being entirely serious. :-)}

islayian @davidDmuir According to Gardner in 5 minds for the future. Synthisizing is one of the most imortant skills we must develop 2:00 PM Oct 23rd

lynnehorn @DavidDMuir I'd like them to learn how to use all the communication things they have to learn as well as socialise 2:10 PM Oct 23rd

lynnehorn @DavidDMuir I think they need to know how to share that information appropriately in good ways,just started wikis to try and get them to 2:14 PM Oct 23rd
{Ah! The perils of the text limit in Twitter!}
lynnehorn @DavidDMuir to collaborate on homework tasks. 2:14 PM Oct 23rd

parslad @DavidDMuir To function efficiently in free market, one needs to expose oneself to the risk of overload, or pay someone to sift for them! 2:35 PM Oct 23rd

joecar @DavidDMuir easy to say yes but actually all this new info comes with filters bloglines google reader and you can still switch off 2:58 PM Oct 23rd

blethers @DavidDMuir ..Only if they succumb. Moderation in all things... And maybe it's part of education to make sure they handle it? 3:09 PM Oct 23rd

JConnell @DavidDMuir sorry David - got too many RSS feeds to read to be able to answer you ;-) 4:54 PM Oct 23rd
{It took me a while to get this... then I laughed out loud. Own up... how long did it take you?}
JConnell @ DavidDMuir ... seriously tho - teaching kids to filter intelligently is a massive issue 4:58 PM Oct 23rd

So, that's my reply and thoughts from Twitter. What do you think?

Ask Twitter: Mobile phones in education

I'm still getting my head round Twitter. On Twitter, the insignificant and the indispensable collide - sometimes in the same tweet. That's part of the reason I remain unsure about Twitter. I said recently that I was unconvinced about Twitter's value as a CPD tool but other Twitter users challenged me on this. So rather than just use Twitter for the insignificant I thought I would try something that was at least educationally interesting. :-)

Noo Possession
Originally uploaded by Saad.Akhtar

A student sent me a text with a question. I answered it but wondered if my Twitter contacts could hep me expand or develop my answer. The context was a session I delivered to PGDE(S) students on using mobile phones/technology in the classroom. (Started sort of the same as my SLF spot but went to broader issues than just gaming.) I invited the students to text questions and comments during the session and responded to some as I went along. However, I thought some questions deserved a more considered response.

One such question was:

Do u think it is right to use individual students mobile computing equipment in a comprehensive education system?

My response:

This is a good question and it is certainly something that should be considered carefully and checked with your Principle Teacher (at least) before you do anything that will cost pupils/parents money.

I would defend it on a couple of grounds:

1) We already use equipment provided by parents/pupils on a daily basis. At a trivial level - pens and pencils for example. However,a as a parent I know I also contribute directly in other ways. For example, a charge is made for ingredients in Home Economics, I pay for music lessons and supply PE kit. I don't in principle therefore have a problem with the concept.

2) The pupils have this kit already - I'm not suggesting they buy something new.

3) I suspect that a good few are on contracts with free minutes and free texts so it may not even cost them to send a text. (I'd be interested in an unscientific poll of your classes when you get back to school to see if this is correct.) Besides, there are ways of using their mobiles that don't cost anything. For example, I didn't have time to talk about Bluetooth.

However, it is something we need to think carefully about and I'd be interested in other opinions.

So, I asked for some other opinions from Twitter and my comments in {curly brackets} are copied below:

blethers @DavidDMuir ..did the questioner mean because they'd have to pay for some education? Perish the thought! 01:29 PM October 13, 2008

blethers @DavidDMuir ..I went to a school where you had to buy all your books. I don't have a problem - do the students?? 02:52 PM October 13, 2008

{I think Mrs Blethers is saying the same kind of thing I did - education is valuable and some costs have always been associated with learning and teaching even in the comprehensive system. As long as we make sure nobody misses out due to lack of funds, I too have no problem.}

jayerichards @DavidDMuir I think it would be very wrong not to use them - lets be creatively subversive in our classrooms ! 01:48 PM October 13, 2008

jayerichards @DavidDMuir that s of course, providing you don't use up all their credit! but for bluetooth, photo/video/ podcasting etc that's good.. 01:50 PM October 13, 2008

{Worth noting that I didn't share my response on Twitter, but Jaye has picked up another of my points - there are ways of using mobiles in class that don't cost anything (assuming you already have the equipment). Also, I liked her call to be "creatively subversive"!}

goodonskis @DavidDMuir It's okay, in my view, as long as we are not increasing inequalities amongst pupils 02:04 PM October 13, 2008

{An important point. In the same way that I made pencils available in my class for those that didn't have one, do we need to make mobiles available?}

parslad @DavidDMuir At Education Unbound in London last week, I said that comprehensive education may work against this kind of personalisation 02:53 PM October 13, 2008

parslad @DavidDMuir I mentioned: comprehensive ed, unchanging pedagogy, OECD-obsession, 'blocking', and 35-hour CPD as limits on personalisation 10:08 PM October 13, 2008

{Still not sure I understand this point. Is it that there are all sorts of structural problems that have to be overcome before mobile phones can be used effectively in schools and within the current system, those problems may never be overcome. And talking of structural issues...}

tarannau20 @DavidDMuir Yes, if the student wants 2 and is willing 2 take onboard skools security policies etc. I wonder whether teachers would like it? 09:57 PM October 13, 2008

{Two good points: 1) should it be compulsory or do we have to offer alternative way of doing it for some? 2) Policies will have to be developed and communicated to pupils as to what is and what isn't acceptable use.}

nwinton @DavidDMuir : I don't see why not. Not every pupil has access to a PC at home, but that doesn't stop us suggesting them for research. 10:03 PM October 13, 2008

{Perhaps the key word there is "suggesting". If we make it compulsory though... (see above).}

spookingdorf @DavidDMuir Yes, but student needs to abide by the AUP and be responsible for the equipment. Teachers need enlightening too, to allow use. 10:05 PM October 13, 2008

{It may be their own equipment but school use implies school rules - yes?}

digitalmaverick @DavidDMuir - I'd say whilst not DESIRABLE it is APPROPRIATE if its the ONLY way such a device is to be used in school 10:27 PM October 13, 2008

{Reading between the lines here... in an ideal world, schools would have all the equipment they need but in the real world it may be better to use equipment provided by the pupils live with current restrictions.}

If I've misrepresented your tweet, set me right with a comment.

So was Twitter an effective way to get feedback? Certainly, the number of responses in a short space of time was impressive. The brevity of Twitter messages is frustrating at times but each message added something to my reply and by pulling them together here, we have the opportunity to refine our answers and continue the conversation.

I'll invite the students to have a look. Hopefully the student who asked the question will chip in too.