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.

My Tweetwheel (or “why social networking matters”)

This week at Learning with Computers, Ana Ma. Menezes is helping us all learn about “Microblogging with Twitter“. She’s a great facilitator, and despite my limited availabilities I’ve felt eager to give this issue some minutes… Somebody either in this community or at Webheads in Action had mentioned Tweetwheel, and I gave it a try. You can see the result above (click on the image to see the original page, and hover on any “friend” to see how many friends we have in common). I’m currently following 81 people, mostly EFL teachers, all of them usually twittering about EFL teaching and sharing useful resources. I guess I needn’t explain how this does away with the isolation of traditional f2f teaching in the classroom, and how it maximizes opportunities for professional development with like-minded colleagues!

Teaching writing, teaching life…

Co-presenting with Bee Dieu for Blogging for Beginners, Aaron Campbell said:

“Over time…
Authoritarian and Vertical Classrooms
Create Authoritarian and Vertical Minds”

(click here to watch their wonderful presentation on “Involving students in Blogging“)

Having watched _{(click on the grey triangle over the image below to see the video)}:

Web 2.0 The Machine is Us/ing Us (4:31 mins)

by Digital Ethnography (a working group of Kansas State University students and faculty dedicated to exploring and extending the possibilities of digital ethnography, led by Professor Wesch) today,…

I wonder whether we writing teachers can keep denying that…

“Over time…
teaching unilinear writing, fixed in time
creates unilinear thinkers, unwilling to question
and mistrustful of lifelong learning”.

Gladys (rethinking my teaching practices !)

_{NOTE: first time embedding a video in one of my blogs!}