A first for NCI Learning and Teaching - Twitter makes its debut at #NCILT

I spent an enjoyable lunch time seminar at the Centre for Research in Learning and Teaching (CRILT) in NCI today where the topic of conversation was "What Makes a Good Teacher?". For the first time (to my knowledge) Twitter was used to get some preliminary questions and comments before the seminar. Though the vast majority of those attending do not use Twitter, there were  few of us discussing the points in back chat mode, plus a couple of our colleagues who could not physically attend were also commenting through Twitter. We had the Twitter feed on the seminar room wall. and though the feed was rather slow to update - it did I feel add to the proceedings. This type of Twitter activity at meetings and conferences is now well established all over the world.

For a change I decided to say nothing at the seminar, but to confine my comments to the Twitter medium. While it is hard to shut up (especially when the topic of conversation was so interesting), I did enjoy posting to the Twitter wall and reading the comments of others. The hashtag is #ncilt, and here is the feed:

Tweets about "#ncilt"

Experimenting with Twitter in class #HDSDA #analytics

This semester I am using Twitter as part my Business Analysis and Problem-Solving Techniques classes on the Higher Diploma in Data Analytics. I'm doing this for sharing information only, and it is not compulsory for students to take part. Some of my colleagues have done this and I know from others that it is now becoming a popular tool for learning. In my class we agreed to use the hashtag #HDSDA - about half the class said they used either Twitter and/or Linkedin (my tweets automatically go to Linkedin). From time to time I will tweet about Business Analysis as well Data Analytics, and hope that students will benefit from and share the tweets.

I have also added the Twitter feed to my Moodle course page, but not after encountering some problems. Twitter provides a widget to generate the code, but for some reason it would not work for me yesterday (I tested it again today and it does works - I suspect a temporary glitch on Twitter side). I put a call out on Twitter for some help and Moodle genius @ghenrick responded, created the code for me, and talked me through the fix via Skype. This is a wonderful way to connect and solve a problem!

I'll be sure to survey the students and provide some analytics about the use of Twitter in my class after the semester is complete, and report my findings here.

Tweets about "#HDSDA"

Following 1,000 Twitter Accounts, and Working at the Same Time

Today I have followed my 1,000th Twitter account when I clicked to follow @irishmammies. One thousand accounts - that's a lot. I know some people follow a lot more and it must be hard to keep up. I'm sure that just like everybody else on Twitter, I follow friends, colleagues, academics, celebrities, news feeds, education feeds, newspapers, sports organizations, and a lot more. I find it is a great way to keep up with topical discussions, and several times during the day I will check in on Twitter to see what the folks and organizations I am following have to say.

Image source:
Twitter.com.

Some business have often asked "How do you make money with Twitter?" (and Facebook). Quite often the best answer might be to "Turn it off". Twitter is incredibly addictive. Today I read the article "5 Grammar Points You Don’t Have to Care About Anymore" which I would have missed if it not for someone else that I follow having tweeted about it. Should I have been doing something else? Twitter takes a lot of the work out of keeping up-to-date with subject areas that I teach in, but many people might regard using Twitter as a waste of time. 

Me - I intend to be a bit more active on Twitter during the coming academic year, and post tweets about topics that I think my students should know about. I will be recommending accounts to follow at the start of the year and encourage students to tweet and retweet items of interest.

Twitter is also an incredibly powerful tool when you want to complain about something. Putting your complaint in a public domain like Twitter makes companies sit up and take notice much quicker than they might if you make a call to a Support Line and speak to just one person. I've got Eircom to fix my broadband at home in the past, and more recently got free stamps from An Post when I tweeted about their stamp machine not working in Dublin Airport. A tweet can trend so quickly that companies are using Twitter to address things quickly and address customer concerns and complaints.

Should Students Use Twitter?

We had a discussion about the use of Twitter in the classroom today and in general I am in favour of students using Twitter as a learning tool. I get so much information and links to interesting things from the people and organizations I follow that it is like having a private news feed of stuff you want to hear about.

Image source: Twitter.com.

The edudemic blog has a post by volunTEENation, about Why Students Should Use Twitter from December last year. Three reasons are given why: 

    1:  The importance of access

    2:  Connect to a wider audience

    3:  Students can tweet for good

Students can connect to professionals and other students in their field, promote volunteer work, improve traffic to a website, and use Twitter as a free way to market and promote a new business ideas. For the Computer Science students in my classes I recommend that that they should follows technical Twitter accounts like @siliconrepublic and @slashdot.  It's a great way to keep in touch with developments in any field, especially technology.

Twitter provides a wealth of information for students and everyone else - it is a fantastic educational resource whether used inside or outside the classroom. I'd like to see us educators embrace it some more.

Map of Educational Tweeps

Here's an interesting tool to show on a map the location of people involved in education all over Ireland and Britain. It is available from the ICTmagic wiki (which was the Edublog Award winner of the best educational wiki in 2011). As more and more educators and learners use Twitter, it's a nice idea to see where we are all actually located. It's sparsely populated so far, and it took a couple of weeks from when I added myself to finally being added to the map. As I write this I am the white dot over Dublin. If you use Twitter, why not add yourself?

I like Twitter, but....

Every morning while I am having a cup of tea and still trying to wake up I do three things on my iPad: I check personal email, the Irish Independent front page, and Twitter. I see what all the early risers in Ireland, such as @topgold and @brianmlucey are up too. I also listen to @morningireland on the radio, and like to see what is happening around the world with @storyful. 

Image Source: Twitter.com.

However, I am not a very active person on Twitter. All my blog posts automatically go out on Twitter (Facebook and Linkedin too), so this creates at least some activity. Occasionally I re-tweet what others say. I also do not have Twitter on at work - it is quite addictive and very distracting.

There are many Twitter statistics available and I was interested to fine out that I am the 36,973,895th registered Twitter user out of a total (as I write) of 637.4 million Twitter users. This makes me on Twitter longer than 94.20% of all other Twitter users! This information is from Twopcharts.com.

I have seen how some educators, such as Jane Hart, use Twitter for educational purposes and I would certainly like to explore some possibilities with this tool. Students also follow me and I (mostly) follow them back. There may be endless possibilities for using Twitter in third-level education, but its flaw is that to do this you also can't help seeing tweets from the likes of @stephenfry, @DustinOfficial, and @RossOCK!

Belated "Happy Birthday" Twitter from @eoloughlin

On 2st March 2006, Jack Dorsey wrote the first tweet ever. It is now fair to say that Twitter has revolutionized the way people communicate. I have been a Twitter user since 1st May 2009 when my @eoloughlin account was set up - that's 1,058 days ago according to Twopcharts.

The first tweet.
Image link to Mashable.

When I am having my breakfast I now always check personal email (never work email) and Twitter on my iPad. It's great to see news items and what people are up to. I follow a lot of academic folks who are brilliant at sharing ideas and providing links to articles that I might otherwise not discover.

However, there's a lot of trivia and junk on Twitter, and  we need to choose carefully who and what we follow. Otherwise we'll be snowed under with tweets. I am following 493 people - sometime the flow of tweets on Tweetdeck is hard to keep up with. I often wonder what people who follow thousands of people do - speed read?

As mentioned in a previous blog post, my practice is not to have Twitter on during work. It is incredibly distracting and I am also concious that anything that I tweet is highly visible - eg to a student waiting for results of a test or an answer to a question. Also - colleagues (though very few are on Twitter) and managers can also see me tweeting when the expectation might be that I should be doing some "real work". I envy some academic colleagues from other institutions who seem to be able to tweet at will.

So - a belated "Happy Birthday" to Twitter. Long may it, and all who sail in her, live.