Yesterday I gave a small overview of Twitter to a small group on campus as the first part of the Fall Semester iDIIA Talks. The link below takes you to the PDF of the handout that I gave out. It has lots of resources, links, tips and suggestions for using Twitter. Enjoy!
Download the handout here: http://drop.io/diia_talk_twitter
Keene
New Media Manager
DIIA Faculty Development Specialist Leslie Jarmon received a grant from the Transforming Undergraduate Education program to support a University of Texas System innovative teaching initiative based in Second Life. Dr. Jarmon leads the nation’s first system-wide program to stimulate creative approaches to instruction, increase student access and success, and manage or reduce instructional costs.
The program will “use the virtual world environment to cultivate working communities of learning and discovery transcending the complex, interdisciplinary UT System, empowering students to become innovators and thought leaders throughout Texas, the U.S., and the world,” according to this week’s DIIA spotlight article by Michael Barrett.
The Chronicle of Higher Education picked up on the project here, and Dr. Jarmon was featured in a UT-Austin OnCampus accolade here.
As the social networking scene continues to explode, developers are increasingly finding novel ways to use services such as Facebook and Twitter. Through the Facebook Connect technology, the developers of a web app called Aardvark seem to be onto something. Their service basically crowd sources your contacts and contacts of contacts in Facebook to help answer any question you may have. Any question. So how good would this be for students? Probably pretty good unless you are taking a test, in which case asking the Vark might not be a good idea.
For getting answers to questions stumping you, you can submit your question to Aardvark which is then interpreted by the system’s artificial intelligence system. It then sends the message out to people in your extended social network who might be able to answer your question. The question is sent out anonymously and the replies back are as well (as far as I can tell), so no question is too ridiculous. Your identity should not be revealed. A average response time is about 5 minutes. And of course an iPhone app was just released. This is an intriguing application that will be interesting to see how it matures, especially in higher education circles.
Keene
Even after posting approximately 60 entries, clearing 2,364 spam comments, and live-blogging SXSWi and AccessU, I still can hardly believe it has been a whole year since the DIIA Blog came online. The experts say that a blog is only as good as its content, and I sincerely hope that readers found the DIIA Blog to be a rich source of up-to-date information, insight, amusement, resources, and perspective.
It was personally gratifying to see page hits approaching the 100,000 mark while live-blogging at SXSWi, knowing that we were spreading the word about DIIA among the industry movers and shakers.
AccessU, although smaller in scale, brought attention to the vital importance of accessibility to everyone who uses the World Wide Web. It was there that I coined my mantra, “Curb cuts for computers!” as an analogy for how accessible design benefits all of us. Glenda Sims (UT), Sharron Rush (Knowbility), and all the caring geniuses who developed the standards have made me a life-long advocate of designing for usability. We will all most likely face obstacles in communicating via the Internet as we age, so why not plan ahead?
Most of all, I have enjoyed learning more about the world we live in–from my blogging colleagues, and from the research I’ve engaged in to find something worth blogging about. I hope to hear from more DIIA voices in the years ahead, bringing wider-ranging, thought-provoking information to our attention, and engaging in dialogue through comments–although not the spammy ones, please!
If you use a Mac platform, Amy Miller has developed some nifty widgets to ping you when a new post goes up. Dana DeLoca, DIIA’s creative videographer and photographer has added a rich visual dimension through the “Photo of the Day” to complement our wordy posts, along with her fantastic sidekick AJ Landeros (Mr. iPhone). Truly, it takes a village…
My birthday wish for the DIIA Blog is to see it expand and grow, touching more lives, enhancing the University of Texas at Austin experience for faculty, staff, and students, and drawing in a wider circle of commenters to challenge and engage us in fruitful dialogue.
Blog on!
A recent story in the New York Times highlights what has becomes reality for many–we live, breathe and eat the Internet. From the moment we awaken, our lives are intertwined with obsessive check-ins with our virtual worlds. Read: Coffee Can Wait. Day’s First Stop Is Online. for some background.
I admit, I, too, am caught up in this obsessive behavior and I would love to find a way to bust out. I recall with fondness a period of several years (mid-80s through the early 90s) when working on my undergraduate degree that I seldom if ever watched television. It was only after I realized that there were all these conversations about MTV, ESPN and 90210 going on that I decided to check things out. Admittedly, I was tired of being out of touch. I was worried about being perceived as ignorant and out-of-touch. It didn’t take me long to catch up. . .
Now, however, I’d like to bow out again. Even though I love non-network TV (Hung, True Blood, Entourage and the like), I find myself wondering what it would be like to divorce myself from the “mainstream.” And, I want to separate from my online “world” and what television has to spew. But, even as I consider my options, the one organization I looked to for salvation of sorts has succumbed to the latest buzz–Twitter. Egads! Are you kidding me? But, no, The Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education e-mail list has been inundated over the course of the last few days with post after post related to the use of twitter in higher ed. (Sorry, but I can’t get Ashton Kutcher out of my head!) Anyway, I was fed up–here my beloved POD list was being taken over by folks who were proclaiming their interest in, and dare-I-say love for, twitter. All I could think was–then tweet–dagnabit! I don’t want to hear about it! But, alas, my curiosity inspired me to dig a bit deeper and read the following cogent blog about the topic–http://www.gardnercampbell.net/blog1/?p=840. And, on this sight, there is a reference to what appears to be some fine (instructional) work being done at UT-Dallas in a History class led by Dr. Monica Rankin. So, I guess I need to reconsider my resistance, and with that in mind, I’ll share a YouTube link to Dr. Rankin’s class so that you can make your own decision. In the mean time, I guess I’ll check my e-mail, or read some online news, or perhaps even search for a Twitter tutorial…do they have those?
How many ways can one write something in 140 characters or less? It seems more and more these days. As Twitter flits into the lives of just about everyone online, the challenge has been how to manage, organize and keep track of all the short attention span chatter. Initially, there was really just your plain vanilla browser and the Twitter.com website. You created an account, you logged in and you began posting snippets about whatever you could in 140 characters or less. People followed and you followed others. It all quickly became something like managing your email InBox without a lot of order. But this has changed and now Twitter users have many options to manage the micro-blogging tool. These tools give you the ability to better visualize the tweets, search, flag favorites, retweet something, send direct tweets etc.
So here is a brief rundown of a few Twitter applications that you might want to check out. Many of them are Mac apps but this is the platform I compute on so there is a bias here. Still, there are a few cross platform options. Please let me know if there are others I have missed or more options on Windows.
TweetDeck (Mac/PC) - This is the poster child Twitter app that was created with Adobe Air so its a cross platform offering. This app offers configurable multi-pane view of Twitter activity which you can see your friends, create and see groups, see search results, see twitter trends and even load up 12 second videos via 12seconds.tv. It also integrates into your Facebook page for status update monitoring.
TweetDeck for the iPhone - Quickly becoming the favorite Twitter app on the iPhone. Its unique in that it brings the multi column feature to the hand held device which is a nice touch (sorry for the pun).
Seesmic Desktop (Mac/PC) - Another Adobe Air app that is cross platform. Seesmic used to be a poster child for video sharing and posting but it is moving away from this to focus on its Twitter application which as become a favorite. It supports multiple twitter accounts and can hook into Facebook updates. It also supports multiple columns. Still, I find the Adobe Air app interface a little sterile but it works.
Twhirl (Mac/PC) - Another Adobe AIR app that can support multiple Twitter accounts and taps into other social networking sites. I have not experimented too much with Twhirl but it does support multiple accounts and supports various other social networking services. It appears Twhril is also developed by Seesmic.
Tweetie - This was the de facto standard on the iPhone but its losing some ground to the excellent TweetDeck iphone version. In addition, there is a desktop version of Tweetie which is nice, but it can’t display multiple columns of data the way some of the other apps can but it has a slick, modern interface.
Twitterific (Mac) - This was one of the first Mac Twitter apps and its still very good. There is a desktop and iPhone version. Its very minimal (sort of like Twitter!) but people like it because it got a minimal interface and does not distract you (as much).
Nambu (Mac) - This is a nice desktop app that lets you access your multiple Twitter accounts and configure things in one view with multiple columns, including popular posts, Favorites, etc. Nicely done. Early versions had bad memory leaks, but the developer seems to be actively patching these and issuing regular updates.
Beak (Mac) - Beak is fairly new to the Twitter app arena. It has some promise. I have not played around with it too much. The interface is very Mac modern, but it seems to lack some features of the other apps (but it looks nice!).
Twittelator Pro - This is a full featured iphone/ipod Touch only Twitter app that is well polished. If find it a little slower than other Twitter clients, but its got a lot of nice features. Its developed by Stone Design, an experienced and long developer who began developing for the NeXT platform.
Eventbox - EventBox is a great app for managing several different social networking applications such as FaceBook, RSS feeds, Reddit news, Diig, Flickr feeds and more. I like this app and use it fairly often. Its got good potential. The downfall again is that because it taps into multiple services, it does not really shine for any particular one. But if you use multiple services in addition to Twitter, it might work for you.
If I had to go and choose one app for Twitter, I would go with Nambu because its got a Mac like interface, supports multi-column views and multiple accounts. A close second is TweetDeck, but I am still getting used to the Adobe Air interface. I also like Tweetie and it might be included to use it more if it supported multi-column views.
Honorable Mention - Monitter is not a Twitter app but it is a great way to monitor (get it?) multiple Twitter searches. This is a great tool for researching trends on Twitter and covering breaking news or other time sensitive topics. Check it out. Its pretty interesting.
Double Honorable Mention- Twitter is not the only 140 character micro-blogging solution out there. Identi.ca is rapidly gaining some traction and many of the apps above support Identi.ca accounts now. You can go to their website for more info, but its basically similar to Twitter, with one big exception. Its open source unlike Twitter. Also, there is Yammer, a micro-blogging service like Twitter but aimed at the corporate business world.
This should be more than enough to get one Twittering away. And now back to old school blogging… ahh that oh so early 21st century technology equivalent of the chalkboard.
Keene
Annual Webby Awards
The winners of the 13th Annual Webby Awards were announced today. The Academy selected winners from nearly 10,000 entries representing all 50 states and 60 countries worldwide. Winners receiving the prestigious title of the best of the Web have been selected in over 100 Website, Interactive Advertising, Mobile and Film & Video categories.
The Webby Awards is presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.
The venerable journal publisher Nature Publishing Group is known in academic circles and beyond as the heavy weight for publishing research in the sciences with Nature being its most well known title. In January, the publisher opened its doors to a wider community aimed at letting students and other learners to access content from extensive catalog through their education group. That a publisher of such stature has recognized the need and demand to open content for educational purposes beyond traditional academic circles is notable. This is especially so since it is clear that more and more students are getting information from the web and not necessarily from the pages of their oh so 20th century textbook technology, a fact that is not lost on Nature Publishing. Ars Technica has a nice little write up about this, but go directly to Scitable to see what Nature Education is doing.
It is also not lost of Nature that providing online content needs to be as authoritative and legitimate as traditional journal publications, but also timely and accessible, something that textbooks have an increasingly hard time doing. You might say that the online content is even citable 
On the site, students and teachers can ask experts and form groups for collaboration and information sharing tailoring the features after popular social networking sites. In the Ars Technica article, Vikram Savkar, head of Nature Educational group, is quoted as saying
“ The goal, according to Savkar, is to provide the sort of dynamic social content that college students now expect—as he noted, biology study groups had already formed spontaneously on Facebook. “The old content models are out of date,” he said, “we all know that textbooks aren’t what students find interesting.”
Now if publishers in other disciplines can follow the lead of Science, the classroom of the 21st Century will be increasingly defined by the four walls of your device’s screen and not the traditional walls of the academia we have become so accustomed. The challenge of course will be how to keep this content free or affordable. Its free for now but for how long? The physical journal Nature is not an inexpensive publication. Also mentioned in the Ars article is another site worth checking out if science education is of interest to you. This is Understanding Science website which is funded through an NSF grant and housed on UC Berkeley servers.
Keene
Joe Sanchez, co-founder of The Educators Coop, served as a panelist at the SXSW Interactive 2009 panel: Gaming as a Gateway Drug: Getting Girls Interested in Technology.
Joe, who is a doctoral candidate, former DIIA staffer, and current UT Austin instructor, shared his insight with the audience based on his experience teaching, writing about, and developing instructional programs using social media, including Second Life.
Others on the panel included (L to R):
Many start blogs and social networking sites, but few build vibrant, self-sustaining communities. This panel explores some of the most successful ventures that grew independently and continue to grow today. Lessons learned, plans for the future will be discussed along with some best practices for those who seek to develop true communities.
BlogHer started as an online conference in 2005. Began as a community, grown to largest online women’s blogging community. Fark didn’t notice they even had a community for a long time. Preferred personal communication. Grew organically. Reddit.com sprang from having a community without an outlet.
How do you balance your own vision of the community with the community’s vision? Inevitably, you have to make the calls and take the lead. There is both a philosophical and practical aspect.
Is it a good idea? Is it something people want? Perspective. Beware the tyranny of well-organized dissent. Reddit lets users have the tools and develop their own communities. BlogHer is similar. Writers can have their own page. You have to listen to your readers.
Forums are a great feature to take the community’s pulse. Can give you a good idea of what your audience actually thinks. Makes the enterprise transparent.
How does the community view itself? BlogHer has fairly restricted community guidelines so that they will feel safe to have civil discourse. Very well self-policed. Most sites have a moderation team.
Reddit installed a wiki page to aggregate rules for the community. Communities regulate themselves.
What do you do with problematic comments? Delete? Lock out? Discuss with infractor? BlogHer won’t allow troll comments. Ars Technica doesn’t delete or modify content unless it’s spam. Not a 1st amendment issue, because it’s not public property.
Currently 5,000 folks are banned from Fark. Ars Technica approaches from a legal aspect. Cardinal and compulsory rules in moderating. When rules are broken, institute a 1-week ban, and try to rehabilitate them. Then will ban for 1 month. When banned members conform to the rules, they can rejoin the community.
BlogHer saw incredibly heated debate during the election, but remained civil. Tried to remain neutral, and encouraged conversations. Pumas = Clinton supporters. Made a coordinated effort to take over the site, and BlogHer was able to stop it from disrupting.
What big mistakes have you seen in other communities? What should you not do?
BlogHer: Tell rather than ask, don’t let community know when change is coming. Don’t involve the community in decisions.
Fark: If you listen to community too much, at least 20% of readers will freak. Can’t let that segment disrupt the site. Will usually get used to it in a couple of weeks. Reddit: the silent majority won’t tell you what they are feeling. You may need to survey this group to find out how they are doing.
Ars Technica is big on surveys–helps quantify things, and shares with the audience when the site is wrong, or doing well. They give away little stuff with the survey to encourage participation. Grew from 3 to 26 forums. Added as they were needed. Don’t add until your community becomes engaged enough to warrant opening new ones–don’t want them to miss out on the greater content. Difficult not to let your ego get the best of you. Must be able to take criticism, however harsh or unrealistic. Do not be vindictive–sends a bad message to the rest of your audience.
What do you look for in a community manager? A new job in the field. Patience and level-headedness. Someone who can remain as neutral as possible and handle a lot of people yelling at each other with grace. Not just the comments, have to vet the bloggers to weed out spam.
How do you mount a conference? BlogHer–easy–it’s community-driven. Add new features to give your community more tools to communicate. Find ways to let people follow the conversations they want to. The best kind of communities feel small. Make it easy for the 5 people who are interested in one topic to communicate easily. If they’re passionate, bring them in. Give them tasks or roles that they can reflect on their profile. Talk personally with the passionate members. Hire them as you grow.
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