Bud Hunt - Twitter Me This: Presence Tools for Just In Time Learning June 24, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Conference Sessions.trackback
Bud started with a list of a dozen online presences that represent his online life. Point 1 - location is irrelevant when living online. They represent his digital footprint. Google is one place to find your digital footprint.
Is presence synchronous or asynchronous? What components are critical to define presence?
Tools of presence include:
USTREAM.tv, seesmic, twitter, meebo, skype, facebook, jaiku, plurk, friendfeed, Pownce, etc.
Presence can be overwhelming, especially if there is an element of celebrity.
Twitter: a micro-blogging tool. A tool of presence. In 140 characters or less, tell people your story. Twitter can be connected to your cell phone. He set up a tweet to see who on the twitterverse has something to say. Twitter can be used to send and collect links. Twitter is a venue for serendipity. Bud shared some of the people he follows on Twitter. There is a level of immediacy and connection to the people where they are. Groups, companies, and other communities can also have tweets and an online presence. Even the Mars Phoenix probe has a Twitter account.
Part of digital literacy is to know that when you put anything on the Internet you give up control of that information.
Bud is now taking a picture of someone in the room with his cell phone, and emailing it to his Flickr account. He then brought up his Flickr account to show us the picture. He then tagged the image so it can be connected to other images and tags.
The next portion of the session is an open time for people to try new things with presence tools. This will be followed up with a show and tell time.
I got the opportunity to help someone get a better idea of what Twitter is and how it works, how to follow people, tweet, block people and so forth. What I learned from that is that the tools are almost simple enough, but not quite there yet. I really think they need to be as simple as an old land-line phone instead of like a new smart phone, which is sometimes too smart for me.
http://12seconds.tv/ is sort of like twitter for video. Good example of tools that interact with other tools. That too is part of presence. Another characteristic of presence is that every tool you can find will be duplicated by someone else. It is a good idea to invest some time in understanding your options. “It is educational malpractice” if you use a tool in your room that you haven’t explored yourself.
http://cybercamp.edublogs.org/ Blog for a learning community for teachers with recorded video sessions.
http://mrssheftelsclass.wikispaces.com includes a site meter. Site usage statistics are very motivational to the students.
http://lablogsapbio.blogspot.com/ Posts with links to student videos of AP Biology work on YouTube.
http://budtheteacher.wikispaces.com/Twitter+Me+This+-+TIE+2008
Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)
Hey! Sol here from 12seconds.tv - thanks for the mention. Let me know if you have any questions