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  • Twitter: What's in it for education?

    Posted: November 1st, 2008, 3:39pm GMT by Vance Stevens
    I'm responding to another post today, this one: "Actually, I'm still a bit confused as to the educational uses of twitter/twemes, etc. Any useful tutorials you could suggest?"br /br /Ok, Twemes is a mashup that aggregates tweets around a #hashtag. The catch is only that those tweeting have to put the #hashtag in their post somewhere. But if you are microblogging to a group, or microblogging something of interest to a group, then it's useful if your group has established early on that they will be following Twemes, so people have in the back of their minds that they can reach the group by tweeting and embedding the #hashtag in their post, and then anyone can go to the Twemes site and find all the posts to Twitter (tweets) containing that #hashtag. Another advantage to this system is that you don't have to be on Twitter to see the Twemes. You can see whatever has been #hashtagged simply by visiting http://twemes.com.br /br /The more interesting question is why should educators use Twitter in the first place. For some time I've been using 'twitter' as a tag in my Delicious: a href="http://delicious.com/vancestevens/twitter"http://delicious.com/vancestevens/twitter/a, so I had a look at the almost 100 links I've got stashed there and pulled out the ones most pertinent to education. Here they are:br /br /If you want an educator's perspective on Twitter from the get-go, have a look at a href="http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/twitter-guide/"http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/twitter-guide//a. If you want a more specific example of how Twitter helped one teacher, a href="http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/767"http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/767/a. There's also the inevitable Commoncraft explanation of Twitter: a href="http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter"http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter/abr /br /My personal awakening with regard to Twitter was when I heard Jeff Utecht's presentation at the 2007 K-12 Online Conference. Jeff solicited help from his Twitter network when he started recording his presentation, and when help arrived I was able to understand how such a network works and how it would be useful to ME. You can listen and see if it strikes the same chord in you: a href="http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=205"http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=205/abr /br /I'm sure I came on this next one through Twitter. The author notes that SHE came on this article through Twitter and points to another article, but you can read hers first and then go there. The point I'm making is that none of us in our distributed learning network would likely have known about this article had we not been on Twitter, so this is an example of how Twitter put the network on to something that we would not have found out about otherwise. Here's the microblog "review" post: a href="http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2008/02/twitter-in-academics-this-prof-shows.html"http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2008/02/twitter-in-academics-this-prof-shows.html/a span style="text-decoration: underline;"/spanand here's the article about using Twitter in academia: a href="http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2008/twitter-for-academia/"http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2008/twitter-for-academia//abr /This work was also discussed in SMiELT at a href="http://dekita.org/smielt/forum/groups/microblogging/microblogging"http://dekita.org/smielt/forum/groups/microblogging/microblogging/a, and yet another writer has reviewed this work here: a href="http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2699"http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2699/a so this one made a big splash when it touched down.br /br /If in further doubt, entertain yourself with this ditty: a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYP-wBaqQAI"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYP-wBaqQAI/a

  • Screencasting via UTipU

    Posted: October 22nd, 2008, 12:25pm GMT by Vance Stevens
    I created my first UTipU video today. Thanks Nellie for the good tip, worked very well!br /br /Voila: br /br /a title="Click for a helpful video" href="http://www.utipu.com/app/tip/id/4712" target="_blank"img src="http://www.utipu.com/images/tip-button.png" border="0"/abr /br /I wanted to see the button that can be generated. That's it above, not that impressive. I wish it could say what it was. In any event, the video, about creating animations in PowerPoint (now I'll bet you REALLY wanna watch it !! ;-) is here: a href="http://www.utipu.com/app/tip/id/4712/"http://www.utipu.com/app/tip/id/4712//a. That link offers you a download (free, and well worth the bandwidth).

  • Famous Last Wordles

    Posted: October 21st, 2008, 4:26am GMT by Vance Stevens
    a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hfuhG7RkGRc/SP1bN5MfpjI/AAAAAAAAAEk/w3pqcwREMkc/s1600-h/wordle_delicious_vancestevens3.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hfuhG7RkGRc/SP1bN5MfpjI/AAAAAAAAAEk/w3pqcwREMkc/s400/wordle_delicious_vancestevens3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259460234088261170" border="0" //aI've been meaning to do this for some time. It's a Worldle tag cloud from my Delicious feed:br /ulliWorldle is at a href="http://wordle.net/create"http://wordle.net/create/a/liliMy Delicious feed: a href="http://delicious.com/vancestevens"http://delicious.com/vancestevens/a/li/ul

  • Stop presses! This just in ...

    Posted: October 10th, 2008, 4:44am GMT by Vance Stevens
    a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_hfuhG7RkGRc/SO7goik8NyI/AAAAAAAAAEU/l9LAcxZT2Xk/s1600-h/uae2iran_newspaper.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_hfuhG7RkGRc/SO7goik8NyI/AAAAAAAAAEU/l9LAcxZT2Xk/s400/uae2iran_newspaper.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5255384802269083426" border="0" //abr /VANCE STEVENS has addressed at a distance delegates at a conference in Rasht, Iran. Originally planning to travel in person to the conference, Vance adapted a workshop which was never given in Sudan with intent to give it at the 6th International TELLSI Conference held at Guilan University on October 8 amp; 9, 2008 a href="http://tinyurl.com/web20iran"tinyurl.com/web20iran/a.br /br /Until it became clear that permission to apply for a visa would not be granted by the Iran Foreign Ministry, Vance was listed in the conference program to deliver a workshop Thursday afternoon, just before the closing ceremonies a href="http://tinyurl.com/tellsi2008"tinyurl.com/tellsi2008/a.br /br /Thanks to the efforts of MORTEZA BARIN, who was able to raise a wireless connection at the appointed time from the conference site, Vance was able to deliver his presentation from his office in UAE using a version of Elluminate provided Webheads by Learning Times. The presentation was recorded and may be viewed at a href="http://tinyurl.com/uae2iran"tinyurl.com/uae2iran/a.br /br /Links to URLs arebr /ulliPortal for Web 2.0 workshop: a href="http://tinyurl.com/web20iran"http://tinyurl.com/web20iran/a/liliTELLSI conference program: a href="http://tinyurl.com/tellsi2008"http://tinyurl.com/tellsi2008/a/liliRecorded presentation on Elluminate: a href="http://tinyurl.com/uae2iran"http://tinyurl.com/uae2iran/a/li/ulClipping courtesy of a href="http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp"http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp/abr /br /span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"Morteza's Comment:/spanbr /br /span style="font-style: italic;"Morteza has been trying to post this comment from Iran but he gets a blank page when he clicks on Comments and tries to post. He can read the comments already there but can't post from where he is in Iran. He sent me this and asked me to put it here:/spanbr /br /A Dream which changed into a Realitybr /I was very disappointed and very worry about the tools and amount of cooperation for having a live conference at the main time according to the conference time. After two days going here and there and speaking with conference organizers finally i found a wireless internet connection the Conference main Hall. And changed our place with another person who wanted to have a presentation in that place. I was full of stress and my blood pressure went up I thought I was burning in the fire but everything changed and first connection with Vance showed me there a way to do it. At that time I asked someone to go invite Dr.Susan Marandi to come to the main Hall. But She was invited to meeting for discussing about TELLSI.I asked God to help me andbr /succeed.

  • Connectivism: Too much Noise?

    Posted: September 13th, 2008, 3:43am GMT by Vance Stevens
    George Siemens commented in the Connectivism and Connectivist Knowledge Moodle this morning a href="http://ltc.umanitoba.ca:83/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=241#3625"http://ltc.umanitoba.ca:83/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=241#3625/a on "how structure influences the ability for students to learn. Too much noise and learners are overwhelmed. Too much order and learners are not challenged. Some ambiguity in the learning process permits room for exploration and creativity." Noting that the course itself was 'traditionally' structured, he said "it's the conversation that's more chaotic...does that detract from the learning experience?"br /br /span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"My reply/spanbr /br /We often hear that the goal of learning is to prepare a learner for a real-life experience of some sort. As a language teacher and learner, I can think of sitting in classes where the teacher tried to reduce the whole of the language into an ordered subset (here, learn these conjugations, that's what the test will be on). Later you find you were not prepared for the real world. I would say, too little noise, too little challenge definitely, but also too little emulation of what the real world is like. In fact, ambiguity is rampant and managing work and learning tasks involves filtering and reduction. If the work of filtering is done for you then the opportunity to learn is reduced, not only of the knowledge to be acquired, but of the heuristics to be applied in the real world. I think field dependence and independence describes how comfortable individuals are with coping with noise, but I would say it is a necessary part of the learning process.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"Connectivism and noise in real life/spanbr /br /Writing that was almost the first thing I did over coffee this morning. It's Saturday in the UAE, a day off, and though I'm not on the east coast diving, I still woke up at six thinking about how much I had to do (noise in my head) and switched on the computer. Do I then systematically work through my task list? No, that would be too structured and would ignore the wealth of connectivist activity (noise and clamor) that had accumulated in email and on Twitter and Google Reader while I slept, and which in fact impacts very much how I carry out the tasks I choose to do on my day off. Reflecting on what I just said I see that if I did not connect with my network today then I would be doing my work as if it were yesterday and I might be seriously out of date (as in 'that's sooo span style="font-style: italic;"yesterday' /span... on the other hand I might actually get some work span style="font-style: italic;"done /span;-) So perhaps touching base with the network is succumbing to the siren call of all that noise, and distracting me into procrastination. I'm not the first to have observed that this might be the case. So I decided rather than discipline myself into efficiency (after all, it's my day off) I would ADD to the noise (with this blog post) and try and document some of that noise and in the process see how connectivism fits into my workflow (or work stoppage, as the case may be).br /br /Now where was I (sorry got up to make coffee, glance at morning papers, another part of my distributed learning network). Oh yes, how many windows are open on my computer? Here's one with an email I wrote but didn't send. Why not? Perhaps the answer will be in something I was looking up in another window (clicking, searching).br /br /Scrolling through windows I come on Twitter. Let's see what the latest is there. That window has lots of tabs open because when I click on what people in my Twitter network suggest I check out, each item opens in a new tab. Twitter is very convenient in this respect. You can click on a tweet, the item appears in its new window, and when you click on the Twitter tab you're back at exactly where you left off. I like to keep Twitter running because it's the epitome of connectivism and connectivist knowledge. And noise. There's a lot of noise in Twitter, but never more than 140 characters of noise, so the noise is almost a whisper. Yet the pearls of wisdom shine there. I've learned a lot through Twitter, not only about things I can use in my practice, but also about how networks and the people who comprise the nodes in them work (and play, and interact both frivolously and seriously, and also that both are important; that you're not your best at work without taking time for play, and visa versa).br /br /So Twitter is a big part of my day-to-day (hour-to-hour? minute-to-minute? nanosecond-to-nanosecond?) connectivist tools and influences, and one of the elixers I feel I need so that I can keep my work up to (today's) date. Email is another, obviously. I follow a couple of really good professional mailing lists. One of them is Learningwithcomputers, a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/learningwithcomputers/"http://groups.yahoo.com/group/learningwithcomputers//a, an offshoot of Webheads that is active and well moderated in a way that Webheads isn't. Webheads is the other list, a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/"http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads//a, and the flip side of the coin. There's a lot of noise in both places, but people keep coming back to and swear by Webheads. And they've been doing that for ten years now. In fact, Webheads is ten years old today: a href="http://webheads10years.wikispaces.com/"http://webheads10years.wikispaces.com//a, which is something I should mention on Twitter shortly (assuming I dare put off doing my real work for just a little while longer; oh, what the heck, the whole morning's gone already!)br /br /Now it's pretty amazing that a group, which started as an eGroup before it was a YahooGroup, and which we then came to look on as a community of practice, and which we now see as part of an even larger distributed learning network, can grow and remain not just cohesive but effective and inspiring, for an entire decade. There may be many other groups and communities and networks in play at the moment, one of the most impressive being the one that has jelled around the Connectivism and Connectivist Knowledge seminars, yet none have stood the test of time as have Webheads. This is really interesting because Webheads has in all that time been essentially leaderless. It's been a mob phenomenon, as Claire Siskin once said, refreshingly without any one person pushing an agenda. It's been a truly co-operative venture, which has sustained itself on the learning that each individual achieves through working within the network. And playing also, not just working.br /br /So to complete this post, I was going to try and document all the stepping in and out of windows I've been doing this morning as I sit alone at my computer while remaining incessantly in touch with my network. Speaking of which, stop presses! Miguel Guhlin just twittered about TipCam free screen recorder (for Windows) that uploads to YouTube! How cool is that? And Jeff Utecht twitters to say he is planning to podcast every presentation at the Learning 2.008 conference in Shanghai a href="http://learning2cn.ning.com/"http://learning2cn.ning.com//a so that's another network we can avidly follow while we're engaged in CCK08, as we get our proposals in for EVO a href="http://evosessions.pbwiki.com/CfP"http://evosessions.pbwiki.com/CfP/a which starts rolling now through February, and I'd promised to announce the next Webheads in Action Online Convergence a href="http://wiaoc.org/"http://wiaoc.org/a today, on the tenth anniversary of Webheads. All this assuming I can skim off time from the demands of 'real' work, the kind that pays the bills and sustains my DSL pipe from my home and workplace to the network where my 'real' work gets done (now which is the 'real' work; will the 'real' Slim Shady please stand up?)br /br /Whoa!! too much networking. Stop the noise, I wanna get OFF! Maybe I should go for a jog (hang on, first gotta download the latests podcasts from a href="http://edtechtalk.com/"http://edtechtalk.com//a so I can stay connected via my iRiver ... What else would I do with my brain while exercising?? ... )br /br /span style="font-size:78%;"TinyURL for this post: bhttp://tinyurl.com/4oasm9/b/span

  • Connectivism Oversimplified

    Posted: September 12th, 2008, 6:43am GMT by Vance Stevens
    It must be the start of the school year. You can tell because I haven't blogged in a while. Meanwhile the super-course on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge being facilitated by George Siemens and Stephen Downes has started in the vicinity of a href="http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/connectivism/"http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/connectivism//a as well as a few thousand other online spaces. One of them is a Moodle where the thread Skeptic has gained a following (you'll have to log in to access the thread a href="http://ltc.umanitoba.ca:83/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=473"http://ltc.umanitoba.ca:83/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=473/a). A devil's advocate has healthily questioned whether reading thousands of emails of introductory nature has been worthwhile, is this then what is meant by connectivist knowledge, and therefore does the theory of connectivism have any substance or is the emperor being exposed to be wearing no clothes. Along with dozens of others, I was drawn into responding as follows. I thought I'd post my comment here so as to have SOMEthing to say in my blog, which I can then tag CCK08 and see if it surfaces somewhere.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"My post .../spanbr /Trying to couch my thoughts in some kind of parameter I guess I'll start with process and product. The desired product is to get some pearls from the discussion but to attain that you've got to go through the process of trolling a lot of seabed. Put more palatably, in order to learn from someone, you've got to get to know the person and establish what each of you wants to learn from one another. Kind of hard when there are almost 2000 people who've suddenly landed in an online space, but let's negate that and say that these 2000 people had no contact whatsoever with one another. Clearly in that case they would learn nothing (from one another). It seems to me that what connectivism describes is how important it is that the connections be made in the first place and from that, assuming these are intelligent people with something to contribute to the discussion, someone's gonna learn somethin'.br /br /It's up to each of us to decide how much energy to devote to this means of learning as opposed to switching off the computer and reading a good book, say. But to me it's not just whether each message contains some information I can use, what's of value is to see how the organism flows in synch, how pearls in the mix might be aggregated and made to surface. And of course to reflect on what's happening.br /br /I'm not sure this posting will help YOU to understand what you are gaining from this course but writing it has helped ME to couch what I might learn in my own personal framework, and if we juxtapose a lot of such frameworks, what would we have? A scaffold??

  • CALL Consultancy

    Posted: August 26th, 2008, 3:29am GMT by Vance Stevens
    It's past time for another blog post (school just started, 5 classes, busy!). I'll make one here from a recent email. It's in reply to someone here in the UAE who asked me if I could make a proposal for a modest computer-based language lab. His company is involved with vocational training of national oil company employees and these companies like to buy a 'package' that they can build to spec and then plug their students into. I used to do this kind of work when I worked for the Military Language Institute here in Abu Dhabi, and we were frequently invited to scout remote locations and propose computer-based facilities for satellite clones of what we had done at the MLI. My feeling at the time was that what we had done in our context was to put tools in the hands of the knowledgeable practitioners we had with us at the MLI in Abu Dhabi, but that if you grafted the same thing onto another location minus the skilled practitioners, you were unlikely to achieve the same results. Not only that but our proposals were frequently warped and sidetracked by the commanders at the bases who had their own ideas of what students should be doing for language training, and these ideas would be best served by purchasing shrink-wrapped software and inflicting that on students, rather than encouraging teachers and students to flourish in the constructivist learning environments we had in mind.br /br /It's been a while since I've been involved in such projects, but the following is in reply to someone who requested that I submit a proposal for such a language learning facility. He was asking that this proposal be comparable to that submitted by a well-known vendor of educational software in the UAE:br /br /"I've worked a lot with [that vendor]. They are good people. Competent too. But they are not teachers. They can sell you a product and support it and display decent command of that product, but they can't really advise you on how to use the product, and in this situation the product you buy might not really be what you had in mind, or what some teacher you've yet to hire has in mind, to accomplish what you had in mind when you bought it.br /br /"I don't sell products commercially. My expertise is as a consultant. I think I know how people learn languages and I know what tools exist online to support my view of how people learn languages, and as most of these are free, I'm surprised when people go for what commercial vendors have to offer without examining their underlying premises. I think this is often through some basic misunderstanding of what is needed and what is available, and such misconceptions can usually be traced to the person in charge who has the money and who is hiring the likes of us to find the products that can be bought that will support what might under fine or perhaps even rough focus be a bogus view of language learning.br /br /"I think it is essential to define what you think the students should be doing in your lab. That's what I might help with, but it would not be to prescribe, but to discuss with the stakeholders what their view is and to try and apprise them of the most current thinking on the topic, and maybe put them in touch with current thinkers. There are several communities of tech savvy educators who are in perpetual discourse on this topic. If I were to have input on this process think it would be to put your practitioners in touch with this community, through its blogs, podcasts, live webcasts, presentations, and seminars etc and get some dialog going as to what you want the students to do. Otherwise THAT crucial aspect is driven by the vendors, which will sidetrack you until someone comes along and sees what you have in hand, and figures out how THAT can be used to instantiate a viable view of language learners and how your students can best learn via technology."br /br /So that's my thought for today. Any other thoughts out there you'd like to share in comments to this post?

  • Trial by Twitter

    Posted: June 27th, 2008, 5:54pm GMT by Vance Stevens
    span style="font-style: italic;"This article was prepared in preparation for publication in the On the Internet column in the June 2008 issue of the TESL-EJ (/spana style="font-style: italic;" href="http://tesl-ej.org/"http://tesl-ej.org/aspan style="font-style: italic;"). If wishing to cite anything from here, please reference:br //spanspan style="font-family:Arial;"br /Stevens, Vance. (2008). Trial by Twitter: The rise and slide of the year's most viral microblogging platform. TESL-EJ, Volume 12, Number 1:a href="http://tesl-ej.org/ej45/int.html"http://tesl-ej.org/ej45/int.html/a/spanbr /span style="font-style: italic;"br /A draft version appears here: /spanspan style="font-style: italic;font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" a href="http://tinyurl.com/3hqn9e"http://tinyurl.com/3hqn9e/a. The TinyURL for this post is a href="http://tinyurl.com/4j9zy9"http://tinyurl.com/4j9zy9/a./spanpbr //phr /br /When I decided to write this article, Twitter was riding the crest of a wave sweeping the microblogosphere. Nevermind that till Twitter's release in 2006 there hadn't even been a microblogosphere. But this Internet niche has proven durable, compelling, mildly addictive even, and integral to the workflow of the most ostentatiously connected educators and knowledge workers. Twitter was an idea that converged with a need few even knew existed. Still today, many are saying "Who needs it? Why?" Others are saying "WE need it, bring itbr /back!!"p/pp/pspan style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"Microblogging/spanbr /pWhat is Twitter? According to Wikipedia, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter/a (as it appeared June 25, 2008): "Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter web site, via the Twitter web site, short message service (SMS), instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific or Facebook. Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone is the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application." /p pFor the more graphically oriented, the Commoncraft series by Lee and Sachi LeFever includes a video explaining "Twitter in Plain English":a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0oamp;NR=1" http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0oamp;NR=1/a. Twitter was rated number 19 on The PC World post "The 100 Best Products of 2008," edited by Mark Sullivan, May 26, 2008br /a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,146161-page,12-c,electronics/article.html#"http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,146161-page,12-c,electronics/article.html#/a./pThat in a nutshell is the story of Twitter. Now to fill in some details: Twitter is currently (in this present nanosecond) the most popular of the genre of 'microblogging' tools that emulate SMS messaging but fall short of blogging by whatever you can say in a blog beyond a very short text message of 140 characters (the maximum permissible length of an SMS text message when sending 8 bit data). Coincidentally this happens to be a text-length that encourages brief and succinct responses to the question, "What are you doing right now?"br /p But if that's as far as you've got with Twitter you're a long way from fully appreciating it. In fact, as with many other milestones in our lives, Twitter's aficionados can most likely recall the moment when they 'finally got' Twitter -- and many have documented these moments in a wiki set up by Alan Levine here:a href="http://cogdoghouse.wikispaces.com/TwitterCycle%20" http://cogdoghouse.wikispaces.com/TwitterCycle /a./p p/pspan style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"'Getting' Twitter/spanbr /pI 'finally got' Twitter when I heard Jeff Utecht's presentation entitled “Online Professional Development,” podcast as part of the 2007 K-12 online conference: a href="http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=205"http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=205/a. Jeff recorded his presentation as a description of what he was doing at his computer in Shanghai while walking us through how he was using Skype and other social networking tools to connect with his professional network from there. So he was crafting his presentation as a live Skypecast, and he mentioned that he had just put a message out on Twitter inviting anyone online to Skype-in and discuss with him how they were using these tools themselves. A few minutes later, he had a bite, as someone responded to his tweet and spontaneously joined him in Skype. The presentation then became a conversation which illustrated how Jeff's network functioned in connecting him with other educators to further each other's professional development through taking advantage of such opportunities to learn from one another. That was when I decided to start using Twitter myself./pAs a further illustration of how Twitter contributes to the conversational aspects of professional development, as I am writing this (everything in Twitter happens 'now') there has just appeared a tweet from Cristina Costa where she points her network to some reflections on her experiences with Twitter. In her posting "Are you twittering this?" on the Pontydysgu - Bridge to Learning blog,a href="http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/06/are-you-twittering-this" http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/06/are-you-twittering-this/a, Cris says she at first "put twitter in my have-an-account-but-not-using-it-tool shelf. And it remained there for a while untila href="http://explorations.bloxi.jp/" Carla Arena/a and thespan style="text-decoration: underline;" /spanBlogging 4a href="http://blogging4educators.pbwiki.com/moderators" Educators/a team spiced up my curiosity about it once again. They were twittering and I started following them. I was fascinated by the amount of relevant information, bits of personal insights and also some trivial tweets that were arriving at my desktop in a twinkling of an eye. It was fun and most times relevant. I started seeing the point of it."br /p Another illustration of 'finally getting' Twitter comes from a post in the blog GNUosphere (a href="http://gnuosphere.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/questioning-twitter/"http://gnuosphere.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/questioning-twitter//a, no author mentioned) where the blogger questions the value of Twitter. The post has since attracted over two dozen comments, each of which addresses some aspect of what it means to 'get' Twitter. The post was of course "twittered" to attract so much attention. Here are some sample comments:br //p ulliI think the effective part of Twitter is the immediate feedback when you have a question or comment that you need to “get out there”. You know it will be seen by your followers and may get you the precise answer within seconds. I have been able to pick up many valuable resources as well as collaborate with teachers who have similar interests./libr /liI find Twitter to be more of an interactive conversation than blogging. When I blog and get comments, it is generally just a conversation amongst a few people. On the other hand, on Twitter, the conversation group seems to be in the hundreds./libr /liI've wondered about the value of Twitter too, but I'm becoming a believer. I've picked up several things of value, not the least of which has been keeping in closer touch with the flow of thought among several close friends. I really do like the community feel of it./libr /liWell Twitter led me to your question, so it must have some value. Through Twitter I have made connections that go beyond reading and commenting on blogs. I've found new tools, jumped into presentations and conversations on UStream that I would have missed had I only heard about it after a blog post, and had some fun too./libr /liThe manner in which information is shared transcends the blogosphere. The information shared is instant in access, shared on a more personal level, and often in response to a request. I do not find myself feeling connected with blog authors, on Twitter however, the unique conversation aspect creates a level of connectivity that is lacking in blogs./li/ulspan style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"Connectivism and the network: The crucial factor/spanspan style="font-size:130%;"/spanbr /pTo 'get' Twitter, you have to have your finger on the pulse of what is pumping lifeblood through the Internet, and that is the people on it and how they come together, connect, and relate to one another in virtuali learning/i networks (for seminal explanations of connectivism see George Siemens's reading list for his upcoming course on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge,span style="text-decoration: underline;" /spana href="http://ltc.umanitoba.ca:83/connectivism/?page_id=13"http://ltc.umanitoba.ca:83/connectivism/?page_id=13/a; the course is free, and you can find out more by following igsiemens/i on Twitter)./p pI threw in the word ilearning/i just now to keep this article on the topic of this journal, but in fact the concept behind Twitter is applicable to almost any kind of virtual network. When people say what they are doing right now they might be feeding the baby or doing laundry, or more interestingly, "Just landed in Bangkok, hey the wireless works." Now let's put the wordi learning/i back in, and suppose that people in your network understand that there might be a low tolerance for things vacuous, and through their postings they genuinely seek to inform and engage one another. Then the postings might be, "See Flickr photos from a tour of Jokaydia," (e.g.a href="http://flickr.com/groups/jokaydia/" http://flickr.com/groups/jokaydia//a) or "Webcasting live right now on the Worldbridges network,a href="http://edtechtalk.com/" http://edtechtalk.com/a," or "Reading a great new article by Marc Prensky" (e.g. Young Minds, Fast Times: The Twenty-First-Century Digital Learner - How tech-obsessed iKids would improve our schools, from the June 2008 issue of Edutopia,a href="http://www.edutopia.org/ikid-digital-learner-technology-2008" http://www.edutopia.org/ikid-digital-learner-technology-2008/a; announced through 'tweets' almost the moment it appeared). /p Now suppose when you log on to Twitter you have a page full of postings like that staring back at you. Suppose you have cultivated a network of professional colleagues who reliably feed you URLs you might want to check out, and you've weeded out those who dwell on sagas in the laundromat. Let's further suppose that you might actually not mind hearing that someone whose writings you respect regularly goes online from the laundromat, or that someone else has an affinity for the brewer's art and intersperses a litany of pointers to interesting blog postings with mentions of tasting this or that amber fluid. One person I follow travels in west Texas on some tech-related work, the nature of which I haven't quite inferred, and tweets occasionally that he is in this bar or that restaurant, and implicitly invites anyone who is in the neighborhood to pop by and carry on the conversation over refreshments. I wonder if he gets any takers (and if so, I assume they would be like-minded people interested in the technology he blogs about), but that's not the point. What we're talking about here is just-in-time informal learning, social networking, low affective filters, a playground for knowledge workers where you can "follow" almost anyone you choose and enjoy his or her 140 character musings, often with a provocative URL to explore, from time to time, day to day, and even minute to minute. These gems of genuine interest are lodged in a matrix of emerging personalities that are themselves interesting. The result is an engaging mix of personality and professionalism, what Clive Thompson (2007) refers to in "How Twitter Creates a Social Sixth Sense" (Wired Magazine,a href="http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-07/st_thompson" http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-07/st_thompson/a).br /br /One of the most compelling aspects of this kind of connectivity is the immediacy. Once a network is established then people gradually get to know one another on it. They start to converse, to respond to and support one another. If I see on Twitter that someone has just begun streaming a presentation ona href="http://www.ustream.tv/" http://www.ustream.tv//a, and if I have a moment to learn something new right then (and the most successful users of this kind of networking are able to multitask or briefly postpone whatever else they are doing in order to avail themselves of such moments) then I will check out what's happening, and I seldom regret such decisions. I'll learn a new concept or try out a new tool, or I'll make a new contact. Working in this way doors will open to other doors I didn't know existed. After a while a lot of doors are open and I begin to feel more familiar with my virtual surroundings. On the flip side, productivity can suffer if one does not appropriately balance the lure of the constant feed-stream with the discipline to address tasks requiring focus. Or does it? Perhaps heightened productivity idepends/i on taking time for such reflection and percolation of information, ideas, and insights.br /p align="center"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_hfuhG7RkGRc/SGU8Uby7QmI/AAAAAAAAADc/tZJd2uKV3Pk/s1600-h/twittercurve.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_hfuhG7RkGRc/SGU8Uby7QmI/AAAAAAAAADc/tZJd2uKV3Pk/s400/twittercurve.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216642065134994018" border="0" //abr /From Kathy Sierra's post from March 16, 2007, "Is Twitter TOO good?" in her blog Creating Passionate Users,br /a href="http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/03/is_twitter_too_.html"http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/03/is_twitter_too_.html/a/pp align="center"Kathy's whimsy prompted Alan Levine to created the knockoff graphic below in his posting "SPLJ 2.0" in his CogDogBlog April 26th, 2007, at: a href="http://cogdogblog.com/2007/04/26/splj-20/"http://cogdogblog.com/2007/04/26/splj-20//a/pp align="center"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_hfuhG7RkGRc/SGU7UQwW9cI/AAAAAAAAAC0/66u9o_hAb3g/s1600-h/life-cycle.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_hfuhG7RkGRc/SGU7UQwW9cI/AAAAAAAAAC0/66u9o_hAb3g/s400/life-cycle.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216640962659808706" border="0" //a/ppMy own habit of using Twitter is to bring it up over coffee each morning and review the bustle in the Twittersphere while I was asleep. I soon have multiple tabs open on my browser where I have followed the most interesting links, and I then start tagging these ata href="http://del.icio.us/vancestevens" http://del.icio.us/vancestevens/a according to my own folksonomy (an idiosonomy?), which might in turn lead me to others who have tagged these sites as well. These links suggested by people in my distributed learning network contribute significantly to my professional development and to keeping me informed and abreast of my field. I can continue my learning by listening to podcasts in my car on my way to work in the morning, often suggested to me by people I follow in my Twitter network, and often recorded by the very people whose tweets I've been following over morning coffee./p The true value of Twitter is in this network. There are other microblogging platforms such as Jaiku a href="http://jaiku.com/"http://jaiku.com//a, Pownce a href="http://pownce.com/"http://pownce.com//a, Plurk span style="text-decoration: underline;"/spana href="http://www.plurk.com/"http://www.plurk.com//a, and even Tumblr a href="http://www.tumblr.com/"http://www.tumblr.com//a. Tumblr is a different kind of microblogging platform to the others, which allows users to post (or microblog) a variety of media on the fly. For more on Tumblr (from the horse's mouth) there's an interview at EdTechTalk between Paul Allison and Tumblr founder David Karp, here: a href="http://edtechtalk.com/node/3023"http://edtechtalk.com/node/3023/a. Plurk is more similar in concept to Twitter, though as with Tumblr, it lets you easily incorporate media in posts. It has an intriguing interface, lets you quickly add Plurk 'fans' from your Twitter followers list, and arrays posts on a time-line where you can pull-down any given one and have conversations by postings comments. Plurk awards users Karma points for effective social networking behaviors (e.g. posting, commenting, introducing others to Plurk) which can be exchanged for enhanced features such as the right to customize a user name. There's an amusing Bubbleshare slide show presenting telltale screen shots from Twitter and Plurk which reveal the less than ideal performance of both programs, at Vicky Davis's Cool Cat Teacher blog, "A photographic journey into Plurk: See for yourself before you jump the twittership," from June 26, 2008:a href="http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2008/06/photographic-journey-into-plurk-see-for.html" http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2008/06/photographic-journey-into-plurk-see-for.html/a. Like Twitter, Plurk is blocked over public Internet in the UAE, so I often use Pownce simply because it isn't. Pownce is a microblogging platform with a pleasant interface which is also media friendly and allows more than 140 characters, but neither Plurk nor Pownce have the network that Twitter does, for me.br /br /Of course how one develops one's network, and where on prefers to do that -- whether with Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku, or Pownce (or some combination of these) -- would be particular to the individual, but there is a critical mass of participation of many users on Twitter that has driven it to the height of this genre of microblogging. It's the happening place where fusion constantly occurs. There might be several discos in town, but often there's only one that's hopping, or that has the magic, the dynamism, the appeal, and Twitter seems to have achieved the status of being where the action is (at present).br /p/pspan style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"Using Twitter/spanbr /pDue to its wide traction, Twitter users sometimes make news in the way they spread news; for example:br //p ulli "Twitter faster to report news than all other media" is the title of a post on May 12, 2008 in the Xar J Blog and Podcast, with regard to reporting on the recent earthquakes in China:br /a href="http://www.xarj.net/2008/twitter-faster-to-report-news-than-all-other-media/"http://www.xarj.net/2008/twitter-faster-to-report-news-than-all-other-media//a/libr /liDuring the recent California forest fires, Twitter proved effective in helping displaced people locate the nearest available emergency accommodations/libr /liTwitter is used in combination with a href="http://jott.com/"http://jott.com/a to report the situation on freeways during morning commutes. Jott is a service that let's you leave a voice message using a mobile phone, which it then converts to text. Commuters phone in from their cars in traffic, the text is then posted to Twitter, and a network of followers develops to keep each other informed of up-to-the-minute traffic reports./libr /li"Twitter Saves Man From Egyptian Justice", by Michael Arrington, April 16, 2008, in Tech Crunch:a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/16/twitter-saves-man-from-egyptian-justice/" http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/16/twitter-saves-man-from-egyptian-justice//a is about a man arrested in Egypt (for taking photographs of a demonstration) who used his cell phone to twitter from jail and thus alert his followers who managed to locate him and secure his release./li/ul pThe simplicity of Twitter makes it amenable to mashup, or use of Twitter API's (application program interfaces) in combination with other tools or applications to enhance its capabilities beyond those envisaged by the program designers. One way of measuring not only the popularity but the versatility of a simple idea like Twitter is by looking at some of the third party software developed for it. For example, there are at least two ways of accessing Twitter through enhanced user-interfaces (see Kevin Chu's (2008) "Twitterific vs. Twhirl" in /dev/null/Kevin atbr /a href="http://blogs.sun.com/kevin/entry/twitterific_vs_twhirl"http://blogs.sun.com/kevin/entry/twitterific_vs_twhirl/a - isic/i, the correct spelling is Twitterrific, with two r's)./p pHere are some compilations of Twitter resources, in no particular order:/pulli"The Most Popular Twitter Apps According to the Blogosphere", posted May 16, 2008 by a Guest Author to Read Write Web, lists (5 each) desktop, Web, and mobile applications that can be used with Twitter:a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/most_popular_twitter_apps_blogosphere.php" http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/most_popular_twitter_apps_blogosphere.php/a/libr /liClaire Bradin-Siskin's "Resources for Twitter",a href="http://www.pitt.edu/%7Ecbsiskin/ling2148/twitter.html" http://www.pitt.edu/~cbsiskin/ling2148/twitter.html/a lists a couple dozen resources and articles concerning Twitter./libr /li"8 Awesome Firefox Plugins for Twitter" posted May 6, 2007 by Stan Schroeder in Mashable Social Networking News covers Twitbin, Tweetbar, Twitter Notifier, Twitty Tunes, Ludicrous, Another Firefox search bar plugin, Twitterbar, and Power Twitter by 30 Boxes:a href="http://mashable.com/2007/05/06/8-awesome-firefox-plugins-for-twitter/" http://mashable.com/2007/05/06/8-awesome-firefox-plugins-for-twitter//a/libr /br /liJennifer Verschoor covers TwitDir, My Tweet Map, Tweetscan, Twitteroo, Twitthis, Twixter, Twype, and Twhirl in her March 22, 2008 posting"Twitter Options" at her My Integrating Technology Journey blog: a href="http://jenverschoor.wordpress.com/2008/03/22/twitter-options/"http://jenverschoor.wordpress.com/2008/03/22/twitter-options//a/libr /br /liSarah Perez's post from May 2, 2008 entitled "Greasemonkey Scripts For the Social Media Addict" in Read Write Web links to dozens of scripts available for FriendFeed, Digg, Mixx, Del.icio.us/Ma.gnolia, Flickr, Facebook, Google, and for Twitter itself:br /a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/greasemonkey_scripts_for_the_s.php"http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/greasemonkey_scripts_for_the_s.php/a/libr /br /li Twitter Fan Wiki provides a place for community members to list resources, which they have been doing in over a dozen categories. The wiki password is given on the front page (and changed regularly) to facilitate both security collaboration: a href="http://twitter.pbwiki.com/"http://twitter.pbwiki.com//a/libr /liCaroline Middlebrook's well-known "Big juicy Twitter Guide" is ata href="http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/twitter-guide/" http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/twitter-guide//a./libr /br //ulp align="center"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_hfuhG7RkGRc/SGU7ULrQgXI/AAAAAAAAACs/Qwh9dbW79wo/s1600-h/gladysbaya_tweetwheel.JPG"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_hfuhG7RkGRc/SGU7ULrQgXI/AAAAAAAAACs/Qwh9dbW79wo/s400/gladysbaya_tweetwheel.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216640961296236914" border="0" //abr /Gladys Baya's Tweetwheel graphic shows which of her followers are connected to one another, posted at:br /a href="http://gladysbaya.edublogs.org/2008/05/19/my-tweetwheel-or-why-social-networking-matters/"http://gladysbaya.edublogs.org/2008/05/19/my-tweetwheel-or-why-social-networking-matters//a/ppHere are some examples of numerous mashups with Twitter (listed alphabetically):br //p ulliBin-Blog by Binny V A: allows a user to access Twitter's database in just 4 lines of PHP code:a href="http://binnyva.blogspot.com/2007/04/using-twitter-part-3-offline-twitter.html" http://binnyva.blogspot.com/2007/04/using-twitter-part-3-offline-twitter.html/a/libr /br /li Hashtags provides real time tracking of Twitter #hashtags:a href="http://hashtags.org/" http://hashtags.org//a /libr /li Crowdstatus; for example:a href="http://crowdstatus.com/webheadsinactioncrowd.aspx%20%20" http://crowdstatus.com/webheadsinactioncrowd.aspx/a - not only does this application allow you to view tweets from those in your network in one place, it also allows you to see them from behind a firewall though Twitter itself might not be working./libr /liGoogle Twitter Search by Steve Rubela href="http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=004053080137224009376%3Aicdh3tsqkzy" http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=004053080137224009376%3Aicdh3tsqkzy/a is a Google-based search engine for Twitter./libr /li Summize 'Conversational Search' allows users to troll Twitter for search terms, at:span style="text-decoration: underline;" /spana href="http://summize.com/"http://summize.com//a/libr /li Tweet Cube - lets you share files on Twittera href="http://www.tweetcube.com/" http://www.tweetcube.com//a /libr /li Tweetpeek lets you create group twitterfeeds,a href="http://www.tweetpeek.com/" http://www.tweetpeek.com//a/libr /liTweetscan at a href="http://tweetscan.com/"http://tweetscan.com//a, a "Real-time Twitter Search" tool, claims to be "the most complete Twitter index outside of Twitter itself," (which isn't saying much, hence the need for all these third party apps ;-)./libr /li Tweetwheel a href="http://www.tweetwheel.com/"http://www.tweetwheel.com//a lets you find out which of your Twitter friends know each by showing connections between them (see Gladys Baya's Tweetwheel graphic, above). /libr /liTwemes allows users to create global #tags for twitter and aggregate their postings through this site: a href="http://twemes.com/"http://twemes.com//a. A good example of this is Christina Costa's use of a href="http://twemes.com/scohrid%20"http://twemes.com/scohrid /a to aggregate the tweets of 66 participants for 6 days this summer in Ohrid, Macedonia; seea href="http://www.slideshare.net/guenter.beham/connecting-our-ples-via-twitter-at-eatel-summer-school-2008" http://www.slideshare.net/guenter.beham/connecting-our-ples-via-twitter-at-eatel-summer-school-2008/a (tag clouds courtesy of a href="http://wordle.net/"http://wordle.net//a)/libr /li Twitstat.com a href="http://twitstat.com/cgi-bin/view.pl"http://twitstat.com/cgi-bin/view.pl/a tracks and processes data on Twitter usage; to be included in the listings, simply follow @twitstat on Twitter/libr /li TwitPic, lets you share photos on Twittera href="http://www.twitpic.com/" http://www.twitpic.com//a/libr /liTwitterbar,a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4664" https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4664/a - allows you to post to Twitter from Firefox's address bar/libr /liTwitterfeed allows you to tweet notices of your blog postings automatically into Twitter: a href="http://twitterfeed.com/"http://twitterfeed.com//a/libr /liTwittermap capitalizes on the social networking aspects of Twitter by allowing users to examine the threads of those being followed by people they're following, as they may well share similar interests:a href="http://twittermap.com/search" http://twittermap.com/search/a/libr /liTwitter presenter a href="http://johnjohnston.name/tw/present.php"http://johnjohnston.name/tw/present.php/a enables your tweets to appear similar to PowerPoint slides./libr /liTwitscoop a href="http://www.twitscoop.com/"http://www.twitscoop.com//a creates tag clouds to show you "What's hot on Twitter right now!" You can also generate graphics showing frequency of tweet topics over past 6 hours, 24 hours, or 6 days./libr /li Twittertroll is another search engine for Twitter by Brad Williams. Feeling Trolly? Visit: a href="http://www.twittertroll.com/"http://www.twittertroll.com//a /libr /li TwitThis provides an easy way for people to send Twitter messages about their blog posts or websites. When visitors to your website click on the TwitThis button or link, it takes the URL of the webpage and creates a shorter URL using TinyURL. Then visitors can send this shortened URL and a description of the web page to all of their friends on Twitter.a href="http://twitthis.com/" http://twitthis.com//a/libr /li Twitzer - a Firefox extension for Twitter that enables tweets to exceed the 140 limit. (and also text to speech and text to audio animations applications are listed here):a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/tools/write-text-longer-than-140-characters-in-twitter/2665/" http://www.labnol.org/internet/tools/write-text-longer-than-140-characters-in-twitter/2665//a/libr //ulp align="center"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_hfuhG7RkGRc/SGU7UhNk2jI/AAAAAAAAADM/MZGLLvcqNI0/s1600-h/twitstats.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_hfuhG7RkGRc/SGU7UhNk2jI/AAAAAAAAADM/MZGLLvcqNI0/s400/twitstats.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216640967077321266" border="0" //abr /iA Twitstat chart showing number of tweets registered on Twitter over the past 6 months/i/pp/p p style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"Uses in teaching/ppWhat does all this have to do with language teaching? Here are some posts and resources that have addressed pedagogical uses of Twitter recently:/pulliSeth biDickens/i/b, April 29, 2008 post entitled "Twitter - MicroBlogging" in DigitaLangbr /a href="http://www.digitalang.com/2008/04/twitter-microblogging/"http://www.digitalang.com/2008/04/twitter-microblogging//a lists some advantages of Twitter when used with language learners. For example, due to small posting requirements, "language students don't need to feel pressured into writing huge, long blog posts (which I have found can be off-putting for students who are writing a “normal” blog.) With Twitter the emphasis is on posting short, but sweet posts and often. Anotherbr /thing I really like about Twitter is that you can send your Twitter posts from a mobile phone (Moblogging?) This could also give our students more freedom to practice their English when its most convenient to them. Out in the centre of town? Seen something amazing? Let your classmates and friends know all about it! Practice your English while your doing so! I'd also like to see if it's possible to centrally “aggregate” several Twitter feeds. I was thinking of trying to set up a wiki which I'd use to tie all the Tweets from abr /class together in one place. It would also make for some really interesting inter-personal reading. Ever wondered what your class mates are doing on a Sunday evening? Check Twitter and see if they are telling you!"/libr /liDavid biParry/i/b, January 23rd, 2008 post entitled "Twitter for Academia" in academHacKbr /a href="http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2008/twitter-for-academia/"http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2008/twitter-for-academia//abr /cites 13 areas where Twitter impacts his classroom. In summary these arebr /1. Class Chatter: conversations continue inside and outside of classbr /2. Development of Classroom Communitybr /3. Get a Sense of the World: Usea href="http://twitter.com/public_timeline" http://twitter.com/public_timeline/a to gain some appreciation.br /4. Track a Word: "Through Twitter you can “track” a word. This will subscribe you to any post which contains said word."br /5. Track a Conference: or follow an event via Twitter feedsbr /6. Instant Feedback: Twitter is "always on"br /7/8. Follow a Professional or a Famous Person: e.g. a href="http://twitter.com/BarackObama"http://twitter.com/BarackObama/abr /9. Grammar: Twitter can lead to discussion and insights of its own unique grammarbr /and ambiguity as well as of the rules it breaks.br /10. Rule Based Writing: Discover insights based in 140-character discourse unitsbr /11. Maximizing Teachable Moments: Twitter provides context often lacking in traditionalbr /classroom situationsbr /12. Public NotePad: "good for sharing short inspirations, thoughts that just popped into your head"br /13. Writing Assignments: can be based around Twitter capabilities.br /ulbr /li Jeffrey biYoung/i/b, writing January 28, 2008 inbr /Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus, in "A Professor's Tips for Usingbr /Twitter in the Classroom," reports how David Parry required the 20 students inbr /his “Introduction to Computer-Mediated Communication” course to signbr /up for Twitter and to send a few messages with the service each week as part ofbr /a writing assignment, with notable changes to classroom dynamics.br /a href="http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2699"http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2699/a/li/ul/libr /libiTwitterlearn/i/b lets you "sign up for regular quizzes via Twitter, allowing you to test your knowledge of Spanish, Italian and German, with French coming soon. Each of the series are linked to our podcasts and the content being tested in the regular quizzes is based on the content of our podcasts. In most cases the quiz will feature a phrase or series of words to be translated into the foreign language. By clicking on the link published with each 'tweet' you will be able to check your answer on the website."br /a href="http://www.twitterlearn.com/"http://www.twitterlearn.com//a/libr /liNancy biWhite/i/b has set up a wiki to invite Twitter users to share how they have used Twitter to collaborate (and also indicate their wish list for Twitter development. Many Twitter collaboration stories (in classroom and professional development contexts) are appearing ata href="http://onlinefacilitation.wikispaces.com/Twitter+Collaboration+Stories" http://onlinefacilitation.wikispaces.com/Twitter+Collaboration+Stories/a/li/ul p/p span style="font-weight: bold;"/span p style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"Microblogging: What's on the horizon?/ppThere is one very disappointing, perhaps even fatal, flaw with Twitter, one that is seriously compromising its effectiveness as we speak, and that is its inability to scale. Google's great success was based largely on the ability of Sergei Brin and Larry Page to cobble together sufficient banks of computers that would keep their brainchild running as it not only cached the entire Internet but coped with the accelerating demands of exponentially expanding droves of appreciative users. But Google had a business model based in cleverly directed advertising that supported its maintenance of warehouses full of computers, which were farmed and expanded as needed to handle the load, whereas Twitter seems to not have the means to support its expansion. Limiting tweets to 140 characters kept it lean and simple but Twitter's database has since just this summer been overwhelmed by its burgeoning popularity. The service occasionally goes down, and whimsically displays a graphic of cherubic birds supporting a pastel whale on improbably stressed ribbons, which like Twitter itself, are perhaps a good representation of whatever it is that keeps Twitter on the air. /p p align="center"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_hfuhG7RkGRc/SGU8UagB5dI/AAAAAAAAADU/OFJfh35n_UA/s1600-h/twitter_whale.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_hfuhG7RkGRc/SGU8UagB5dI/AAAAAAAAADU/OFJfh35n_UA/s400/twitter_whale.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216642064787301842" border="0" //abr /isigh ... /i/p ulbr /li Twiddict a href="http://twiddict.com/login"http://twiddict.com/login/a posts on its site, "We love Twitter. We hate when it's down. If you're addicted to Twitter as well, tweet your heart out through Twiddict and avoid life-changing withdrawal symptoms during Twitter downtime. We'll make sure your tweets end up where they belong". This site gives a status report, but it is sometimes morebr /optimistic than my own status :-( /libr //ul pAs I've been writing this article over the past month, when the service has been working it has not often supported its "OLDER" button. When this button is grayed out you can't access the database of tweets left by your network beyond a single page. If your network comprises a hundred or more colleagues, then this one page of tweets spans only the last few hours of their twitterings. The result is the most damaging thing of all, loss of cohesion of the network. Now I no longer have access to people who normally post when I sleep at night, or during times that I am away from the computer more than a few hours. And it's not just me. Microbloggers are complaining throughout the Twittersphere about this problem, an annoyance experienced by all./pp align="center"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_hfuhG7RkGRc/SGU7UoCYw8I/AAAAAAAAADE/zi-SJqiHfEE/s1600-h/teachlearn_summize.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_hfuhG7RkGRc/SGU7UoCYw8I/AAAAAAAAADE/zi-SJqiHfEE/s400/teachlearn_summize.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216640968909439938" border="0" //aiKonrad Glogowski is using http://summize.com to help him keep up with his Twitter network/i/pbr /p align="center"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_hfuhG7RkGRc/SGU7UR1XccI/AAAAAAAAAC8/9d1SzY6bZnc/s1600-h/necc_hopscotch.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_hfuhG7RkGRc/SGU7UR1XccI/AAAAAAAAAC8/9d1SzY6bZnc/s400/necc_hopscotch.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216640962949247426" border="0" //abr /iLast year's NECC conference had a vibrant Twitter back channel. This year, delegates are preparing their Plan B./i/p p align="left"These problems with Twitter have been taking place just over the past month, and it is hoped that those managing Twitter will be able to revive the service and return it to its former stature. It is clear that Twitter has struck a chord among educators who enjoy and benefit from maintaining frequent symbiotic contact with so many others in their wide learning networks. As current king of the microblog mountain, Twitter has a valuable investment in its reputation for being able to reliably deliver that network on demand to its myriad loyal users. But this fan-base is slipping away as Twitter continues to frustrate those whose lifestyles and workflows now pivot so tenuously on Twitter. Although Twitter has been the tool of choice, like a trusty old car that is starting to give problems, if this tool no longer functions, people will soon opt for another. What people were actually enjoying was the new and effective way of interacting with their network. Now that the concept of microblogging through a constant interchange of SMS messages has proven so stimulating and popular, the herd could instinctively migrate to more stable pastures. Twitter could yet recover, but if not, it will not be long before another tool appears to take its place./pbr /hr /br /A day after posting no comments have been made to this post yet but the following appeared in Twitter (thanks network :-)br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_hfuhG7RkGRc/SGXrxV7kIMI/AAAAAAAAADs/VeaJjRMD72o/s1600-h/comments_thx.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_hfuhG7RkGRc/SGXrxV7kIMI/AAAAAAAAADs/VeaJjRMD72o/s400/comments_thx.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216834976311681218" border="0" //a

  • What about AUTONOMOUS Teachers?

    Posted: June 2nd, 2008, 12:34pm GMT by Vance Stevens
    a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://vancestevens.com/pix/webheadsNYC2008april.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px;" src="http://vancestevens.com/pix/webheadsNYC2008april.jpg" alt="" border="0" //abr /Have six weeks gone by already? I must have been busy. I was in New York for the TESOL conference there, meeting Webheads galore, and then I stopped off in London on my way back to Abu Dhabi where, on April 7, 2008, I had been invited to present at the Learner Autonomy SIG Pre-conference event here: a href="http://learnerautonomy.org/exeter2008.html"http://learnerautonomy.org/exeter2008.html/a, scheduled as part of the 42nd Annual IATEFL Conference in Exeter a href="http://www.iatefl.org/content/conferences/2008/index.php"http://www.iatefl.org/content/conferences/2008/index.php/a 7th-11th April 2008.br /br /My presentation was a part of the "Autonomy and the language classroom: opening a can of worms!" project, a href="http://learnerautonomy.org/wormsindex.html"http://learnerautonomy.org/wormsindex.html/a.br /ulliI am indicated as being 'keeper' of the Technology worm here: a href="http://learnerautonomy.org/wormsmay2007.html"http://learnerautonomy.org/wormsmay2007.html/a (though I was able to pass that off to Deborah Healey back in New York, and now she's got it :-))./liliI produced a paper prior to this: Stevens, Vance. (2007). The Multiliterate Autonomous Learner: Teacher Attitudes and the Inculcation of Strategies for Lifelong Learning, in Independence,Winter 2007 (Issue 42) pp 27-29. Retrieved February 17, 2008 from a href="http://www.learnerautonomy.org/VanceStevens.pdf"http://www.learnerautonomy.org/VanceStevens.pdf/a./liliThe paper is also on my site here: a href="http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/iatefl/exeter2008/lasigworm.htm"http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/iatefl/exeter2008/lasigworm.htm/a and is mirrored as a blog post here: a href="http://advanceducation.blogspot.com/2007/07/multiliterate-autonomous-learner.html"http://advanceducation.blogspot.com/2007/07/multiliterate-autonomous-learner.html/a./liliMy slides are posted here: a href="http://www.slideshare.net/vances/lets-start-with-teacher-autonomy-multiliteracies-and-lifelong-learning/"http://www.slideshare.net/vances/lets-start-with-teacher-autonomy-multiliteracies-and-lifelong-learning//a or http://tinyurl.com/5qmuxd/liliJo Mynard did a nice writeup of my talk on her blog here: a href="http://iateflexeter2008.blogspot.com/2008/04/multiliterate-autonomous-learner.html"http://iateflexeter2008.blogspot.com/2008/04/multiliterate-autonomous-learner.html/a/li/ulbr /br /div style="width:425px;text-align:left" id="__ss_344068"object style="margin:0px" width="425" height="355"param name="movie" value="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=mlitsandlifelonglearning-1207750716054142-8"/param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/embed src="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=mlitsandlifelonglearning-1207750716054142-8" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="355"/embed/objectdiv style="font-size:11px;font-family:tahoma,arial;height:26px;padding-top:2px;"a href="http://www.slideshare.net/?src=embed"img src="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/logo_embd.png" style="border:0px none;margin-bottom:-5px" alt="SlideShare"//a | a href="http://www.slideshare.net/vances/lets-start-with-teacher-autonomy-multiliteracies-and-lifelong-learning?src=embed" title="View Let#39;s start with teacher autonomy: Multiliteracies and Lifelong Learning on SlideShare"View/a | a href="http://www.slideshare.net/upload?src=embed"Upload your own/a/div/divbr /br /I repeated my Exeter presentation at an event April 12, 2008 at the Abu Dhabi Men's College in Abu Dhabi. I started with a short report from the LA SIG Preconference Event in Exeter, and then did the larger presentation on The Multiliterate Autonomous Learner: Teacher attitudes and the inculcation of strategies for lifelong learning, "with focus in particular on the influence of teacher attitudes towards technology as it might impact autonomy in the newer generations of learners."br /br /ulliI recorded the presentation in Elluminate and stored the recording online, and you can view and listen to it here: a href="http://tinyurl.com/468qrp"http://tinyurl.com/468qrp/a./liliI used the Exeter slide show with hyperlinks, a href="http://tinyurl.com/5qmuxd"http://tinyurl.com/5qmuxd/a/liliA photo album was put up to archive the event, well done, with links: a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/tailearn/IndependentLearningResearchMorning2008"http://picasaweb.google.com/tailearn/IndependentLearningResearchMorning2008/a/li/ul

  • Carla Arena Interviews AdVancEducation for a class project. Like, wow!

    Posted: April 28th, 2008, 9:05am GMT by Vance Stevens
    div class="kwout" style="text-align:center;"img src="http://kwout.com/cutout/c/k7/8p/mv7_bor_rou_sha.jpg" alt="http://prosites-vstevens.homestead.com/files/efi/apt2corniche/balcony.htm" title="Vance's Neighborhood" width="585" height="341" style="border:none;" usemap="#kwout_ck78pmv7"/map name="kwout_ck78pmv7" id="kwout_ck78pmv7"area coords="385,258,441,272" href="http://www.vancestevens.com/" shape="rect" alt=""/area coords="393,272,433,286" href="http://www.vancestevens.com/" shape="rect" alt=""/area coords="4,14,49,29" href="http://prosites-vstevens.homestead.com/files/efi/apt2corniche/balcony.htm#" shape="rect" alt=""/area coords="2,314,47,329" href="http://prosites-vstevens.homestead.com/files/efi/apt2corniche/balcony.htm#" shape="rect" alt=""/area coords="364,114,463,188" href="http://prosites-vstevens.homestead.com/files/efi/apt2corniche/livingroom1.htm" shape="rect" alt=""/area coords="405,189,421,203" href="http://prosites-vstevens.homestead.com/files/efi/apt2corniche/livingroom1.htm" shape="rect" alt=""//mapp style="text-align:center;margin-top:10px;"a href="http://prosites-vstevens.homestead.com/files/efi/apt2corniche/balcony.htm"Vance's Neighborhood/a via a href="http://kwout.com/quote/ck78pmv7"kwout/a/p/divbr /br /I didn't expect a lot from this when Carla asked me if I would record something about Abu Dhabi, the city where I live, for the benefit of an online class that she teaches. I wrote back that I had no idea where to begin, and could she just Skype me and ask me some questions. So she did, and produced the most charming blog posting:br /a href="http://explorations.bloxi.jp/a/vance-stevens-talks-about-abu-dhabi/"http://explorations.bloxi.jp/a/vance-stevens-talks-about-abu-dhabi//abr /br /Of course you can hear the recording at Carla's blog. Amazingly, the posting has attracted well over a dozen comments.
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