Just another dent in the damage…

I thought I’d make a bullet-pointed list of why I use Twitter to get some of these things off my mind. Maybe it’ll serve as some kind of disclaimer so I don’t have to keep telling people that it is my personal Twitter feed and the views and opinions I express there are my own, not that of the organisation I work for or the people I work with.

So the main reasons I tweet are:

• to pass comment on news or current affairs – to say something without engaging in a lengthy debate or analysing every last detail of it;
• to communicate with people – I work in a quiet office and don’t particularly like distracting others. I communicate with work colleagues based across the campus to update them on my activities, to ask for help or arrange a lunch date;
• to network with librarians from other organisations – Although I say I don’t use Twitter for work I occasionally seek advice from other professionals or engage in discussions about issues relating to librarianship or Cilip (our professional body);
• to keep in touch with friends who don’t live near by – I don’t particularly have the time to write long emails and I’m not a fan of procrastinating on Facebook so I like to write quick 140 character messages to say ‘hey, I saw this and thought of you’.
• to bookmark web links – I use delicious mainly to store my bookmarks but I like sharing the funnier ones as small distractions from the mundane;
• to follow # tags of the things I’m interested in – such as #iranelection, #mumbai or #wwdc or work related tags such as #uosweb2 or #scaweb2 and conferences or particular JISC projects, honestly it all depends what mood I’m in.

I’m not interested in the latest research about how Twitter ’should’ be used or whether I’m doing it right. Quite simply, Twitter is my brain fart – if it smells too bad, please don’t read it.

Last time I got hooked on Monitter was during the Mumbai attacks last November when my need for real time information got so intense that it became difficult to deattach my eyes from the computer screen. This time it’s the Iran elections (#iranelections) that have really got me. Sat here feeling so overwhelmed and helpless I really have found the evidence needed to prove the usefulness of Twitter.

Twitter has in fact been so useful to Iranians tweeting the ‘revolution’ that scheduled maintenance was put back a day to keep communication open. My only criticism over the last couple of days is the difficulty to sieve through the millions of uninformative re-tweets and misinformation to actually get to the heart of what I want to know – what is happening right now!

Below are some links I’ve found useful over the last couple of days:

• For some great Twitter feeds see: persiankiwi/StopAhmadi/mousavi1388 and Change for Iran;
• For good Twitter round-up tools see: Twazzup and PicFog for images;
• For a round up of the larger context of the Iranian elections see: Revolutionary Flowerpot;
• For a collection of some amazing photographs see: Mousavi1388/TheStyx/Boston’s Big Picture and The Guardian;
• For some general Fisking see: Iran Erupts/Ahamdinejad whips crowd/Iran’s day of destiny and Fear has gone;
• For a bit about elections and democracy see: Christopher Hitchens;
• For some rally footage the best place was always going to be YouTube: BBC Persian/a brave female Iranian kicks police and 15th June crowds;
• For some Guardian Analysis see: election statistics and shots fired;
• For some live tweeting I kept up with Andrew Sullivan’s commentary at: The Daily Dish;
• For some expert analysis from Gary Sick and Karim Sadjadpour see: PBS;
• As always Channel 4 News have been right on! See: Lindsey Hilsum’s blog (she is the international editor for Channel 4 News and is currently reporting from Iran) esp. ‘A day in Iran.‘;
• Good blogs include: For a democratic secular Iran (he was also on Channel 4 News and the BBC)/The Huffington Post and The Lede blog;
• And also see the Channel 4 news broadcasts including nation in turmoil and violence at protest.

Read Write Web has a really interesting post about a Twitter experiment in which a University of Texas History Professor, Monica Rankin, uses Twitter in a classroom environment to discuss the class topics.

Rankin uses a weekly hashtag to organize comments, questions and feedback posted by students to Twitter during class. Some of the students have downloaded Tweetdeck to their computers, others post by SMS or by writing questions on a piece of paper. Rankin then projects a giant image of live Tweets in the front of the class for discussion and suggests that students refer back to the messages later when studying. The Professor’s results so far have been mixed but it is clear that more students are participating in classroom discussions than they used to.

I think this is a fantastic way of generating bigger discussions and it gives students the opportunity to refer back to what was said and continue to contribute after the session. This then builds up a really useful study aid for when students need to compile coursework or prepare for exams. As a rather quiet student I think I’d have been much more vocal on something like Twitter as I find it much easy to get my written point across than my vocal one.

At my organisation we have introduced an Echo 360 system in which lectures get recorded and published within a student’s virtual learning environment alongside all the teaching materials used in class to ‘rewind, relive and reconnect with the classroom experience’. Twitter could in fact be another great way for us to do this and something I would definitely encourage academics to get involved with.

The other day I was quietly working away when I overheard:

But I don’t want to use Twitter, I’m not interested in what people are having for their lunch.

Firstly, how can you not be interested in what people are having for lunch? I actually find this fascinating and often recommend good places for people to get their chips and falafel from. But I understand that there are people out there not as nosey as I am or generally interested in what people do.

So, instead of arguing about why I think Twitter is the best thing ever I thought I’d put my energy into thinking about things you can do with Twitter (other than telling people how good your falafel wrap was). I know there is already a wealth of information for the Twitter user out there but you know, I wanted to throw my two cents in as well.

Who do you follow?

Well, generally I follow people who match one of this criteria:

• people from real life – friends, family (although my Dad hasn’t discovered Twitter yet – shame it’s the perfect way to spy on me) and work colleagues;
• librarians or information specialists posting interesting links to current issues or discussing new technologies etc;
• news services – including The Guardian Tech, New Scientist, Hollyoaks and Heatworld (obviously);
• whale defenders and marine conservationists – because we’ve got to save the whale to save ourselves;
• vegans – I like stealing recipes and looking at pictures of cake;
• and crafters – it’s a good way of finding free patterns etc.

The problem I have then is keeping the personal and the professional separate, particularly as I worry about being too personal in the professional. For example I’m majorly opposed to whaling (as you probably know) but as this has no relevance to my work do colleagues really need to know it? And should I be telling people about long line fishing in the Galapagos whilst having a break from my book orders? Plus there are those examples of how not to use Twitter. Yet given I actually love my job, my boss is really cool (seriously) and I don’t moan about being bored (usually because when times are quiet I get on the look out for new blog material or ways to improve services for students) then I don’t really see this being an issue for me. I did bad mouth Bloglines once though after a frustrating morning and got caught out by their auto searching, but they were actually more helpful than anything else.

One way of overcoming these problems are to make your updates private, but seen as Googling ‘lex rigby’ fills out the first however many pages of my stuff (although I was never a Communist Student and have nothing to apologise for) then it seems odd to try and make my tweets private. I’m quite an easy person to find out information about. I’m a science and engineering librarian particularly interested in new technologies, I’m insanely fond of whales and cats, I craft, I read stuff about Iran (mainly involving women and human rights) and I’m vegan. Simple eh. And I guess that if people didn’t want to know what Bella’s up to they wouldn’t follow me anyway.

What do you use it for?

The most useful thing I have found to do with Twitter is to do with #tags or hashtags. Hashtags are assigned to subjects/people/categories/conferences/companies/hobbies/films or whatever and are a great way to find out what people are saying about them. In putting a hash sign in front of a word you’re essentially creating a link to a stream involving everyone talking about that particular subject. And the great thing is is that it’s all in real time! A real-time search engine, now that is amazing.

OK, so say I attended the 2009 Lilac conference (I didn’t but some of my colleagues did) and I wanted to say something about what I was hearing alls I need to do is say it (or rather type it) and put a #lilac09 tag in. Voi la. But then say I wanted to know what other people were saying alls I’d have to do is go to Twitter Search (or one of the other many search sites) and put in #lilac09 and start eavesdropping. It truly is a fantastic way of searching – built for the people, by the people.

I discovered this during the Mumbai attacks last year. I wanted to know what was happening before the news stories told me and stumbled upon Mumbai attacks coverage powered by a service called Monitter. Brilliant, now I was getting real time updates from the people there on location, as well as others reporting on events as the news unfolded.

But what could I use it for?

Well, other than using #tags to keep on top of your interests there are a vast number of other things to use Twitter for:

• Use Twitpic to share your photos;
• use Tiny URL to shorten links into your 140 character limit;
• use @ signs to reply to tweets and engage in conversation e.g. ‘@lexrigby that was really funny’ (or direct messages to make your responses private);
• use Tweetworks to start discussions or join groups;
• use Twittangle to filter your timeline by rating users and tagging favourites (very useful if you follow people like Stephen Fry and get sick of his updates);
• use Twtpoll to create a survey;
• use Trackthis to track a package from UPS, Fedex, USPS, DHL etc;
• use direct messages to update your LibraryThing book shelf;
• use Twittercal to update your Google calendar;
• use Tweetbeep for a bit of vanity searching;
• use Fuelfrog to track your gas mileage;
• use Botanicalls to get your plants to tweet you when it’s hungry;
• use a Greasemonkey user script (a Firefox add-on) to get Twitter updates in your Google results page;
• or use RFID chips, computers and cameras to keep track of your cats.

See, it’s not just good for finding out what people had for lunch! It’s so much more than that.

Teachingcommons: Teaching 2.0 Circle & Blogging

Twitter and Microblogging:

The general theme of last week’s teaching commons was the discussion of blogging – what it is and how it can be used. It intended to offer ideas to both those new to blogging about how to start up and get writing and to those wanting to get more out of it, if they’ve been blogging for a while, by introducing widgets and RSS. One area of particular interest for me, after reading Boutin’s article in Wired Magazine, was the discussion surrounding microblogging and how services like Twitter can be used in higher education.

Twitter is one of the more well known examples of microblogging, along with Jaiku, which limit posts to 140 characters. It’s basically a ’status update’ application like that found on Facebook but without all the other stuff. Instead of friends you get ‘followers’ and in turn you’re able to ‘follow’ others and their activities quite easily by searching names or locations. The good thing about Twitter is that once you’re signed up you may never need to visit http://www.twitter.com again. Twitter clients such as Twhirl or Twitterific are downloadable for free and automatically alert you to updates in real time as well as providing a user-friendly interface to search and add feeds to your profile. Updating your own status has also never been easier as there’s an abundance of medium to choose from – SMS messaging, email, desktop clients, IM clients and the web, and there’s an option to receive text messages of updates from those you choose to follow (limited to O2). This makes it fast and super user-friendly when it comes to posting quick updates about what you’re doing, whose keynote your listening to, what amazing new product has just been released or even what you’re having for tea.

I have mini obsessions with it. Some weeks I’ll be posting my life story, in others I can’t quite get why anybody would be interested in what I’m doing, in others I think ‘I’m not sure I’m really making the most of this’, in others I think ‘I wish I actually knew more people using Twitter’ maybe I’d feel like less of a stalker and in others I give up completely. This week however has been a week of ’so how can we make use of Twitter in higher education?’ Well after a little thinking, a little discussion and a little searching I’ve come up with a short list to outline a few suggestions.

Twitter in Higher Education:

• Classroom communities - Students using Twitter as a way to collaborate about class work beyond the classroom may lead to more productive discussions in class.
• Class communication – Teachers/lecturers could be encouraged to use Twitter as a way to communicate with students about homework, room changes, time changes, class preparation, further reading etc.
• Conference news – Conference tags (#tags) can be added in posts to identify updates as conference news. In following a conference you’re able to receive live news from an event and gain ‘insider knowledge’ that only the insiders are getting.
• Q and A sessions – Stuck on your homework? Not sure what the next class is about? Was there any reading to do? What room is it being held in? Who’s the guest speaker? If in doubt ask your class mates, surely one of them will know the answer.
• Feedback - Rather than waiting until the end of the module to fill in a feedback form Twitter can be used as a means to generate immediate feedback about a class or event. It can be used to encourage particular teaching methods and offer advice about how to do things differently.
• Distance learners – Using Twitter to communicate with distance learners has the potential to offer students greater learning support and encouragement throughout their courses.
• Networking – As a social networking application Twitter also provides the perfect space to monitor new developments in your subject area on an international scale.

For more see:

• An interview with David Parry;
• Twitter at Penn State World Campus;
• Can we use Twitter for educational activities?

Twitter in Libraries:

There’s also a lot of talk circulating about the benefits of libraries introducing a Twitter service to communicate with its patrons. Librarians could be using Twitter as a platform to discuss conferences and events and keep up-to-date with developments in the field of information as well as to promote library services or alert library users to service downtimes etc. There are examples of libraries using Twitter as a reference service or to inform its ‘followers’ about new releases, library events and even when reservations come into stock but I’m just not sure how well it has all been received.

For more see:

• The Ultimate Guide for Librarians;
• Casa Grande Public Library;
• Missouri River Regional Library;
• Nebraska Library Commission.

So it’s all a great idea, right? Well yes, I think so but in practice you might encounter a few problems.

Potential Cons:

• Encouraging students to sign up to external services may not be such a good idea as there are terms and conditions which apply to these services that are outside agreements students have already signed to make use of university services;
• Information platform overload – There are already a variety of platforms students are encouraged to use such as virtual learning portals, which already have forum facilities etc and as Facebook is already deeply ingrained in student activities some may be reluctant to convert;
• Service management – Like instant messaging (’Ask the Librarian’ services) if Twitter was introduced as a library service there would need to be someone who can manage that service and provide frequent updates. That could mean more staff and more money and could in fact stop the service dead in its tracks even before it hits the mark.