Social networking: sorting the wheat…

I’ve read many colleagues’s concerns about who’s following whom on Twitter, and how seriously all this networking can be taken at the end of the day. In other words, does “n followers” necessarily mean better if higher? I’ve just learned about Twittersheep, and how by just entering my Twitter username I can find out what kind of followers I have:

TwitterSheep via kwout

Just took me a second, and has definitely helped me see what kind of “tweet”my followers would be interested in! And there’s no doubt of this: the better you know your audience, the more motivated you’ll feel to write for them, and the more effective your writing will become!

Here’s the article that taught me about this tool:

What Kind of People are Following You on Twitter

- written by Amit Agarwal on Feb 1, 2009

If you try Twittersheep too, let me know what you think of it!

And now that we’re at this, see what you can get by entering your twitter name at Twitter mosaic (also reviewed by Amit Agwaral, this time on Jan 29, 2009 – here):

Get your twitter mosaic here.

Unbelievable to me!

Gladys

Pageflakes for Educators

Last Jan 23rd, thanks to a kind invitation by Vance Stevens and Nelba Quintana, I had the chance to share an informal discussion on the potential of Pageflakes for Educators with colleagues who were attending the “Multiliteracies for Social Networking and Collaborative Learning Environments” workshop during TESOL EVO 2009. This was my first online presentation, and I felt naturally nervous, but my hosts’ incredible support, and the warmth of those who made a special effort to join us certainly contributed to making it a memorable experience for me! Basically, the discussion turned around 3 main ideas, namely, how educators can use Pageflakes (and similar tools, such as Netvibes or Protopage) for three different purposes: as a startpage, for lifestreaming or as an incredibly easy tool to create personalised sites for different classes.

You can now re-live the session (slides, audio and text chat, all synchronized) here:

http://tinyurl.com/090122baya

(thanks, Vance, for sharing this recorded version!)

Or simply watch the slideshow below:

Pageflakes4 Educators

A few afterthoughts:

• Pageflakes seems to outdo other options in terms of customisation options (themes and layout) and widgets available. It also allows us to create as many private pages as we need, whereas other tools apparently limit this to just one.
• On the dark side: Pageflakes team have been very quiet lately… Apparently, they started twittering on Jan 11th,  2008, but they never updated their status after that. I sent them a direct message just before the presentation, but got no reply. Perhaps it’s just someone using their name? Besides, their Twitter flake has not been allowing signing-in for weeks… just a sad coincidence???
• More worrying: while I was AFK, on a citybreak, Pageflakes was reported to be down for over 3 days. A member of WebheadsInAction mentioned twitters they were moving servers, but rumours went around they might be closing down soon. I hope it’s not true!!!

Once again, thanks everyone for sharing our learning!And a biiiiig hug to the inspiring teachers (esp. Nina Lyulkun and Mary Hillis) who encouraged me to look further into this tool by leading an enriching discussion at Learning with Computers during 2008!

Gladys

Ah! Of course, you’re all invited to visit my Pageflake: http://www.pageflakes.com/gladysbaya.