Tag Archives: socialmedia

#ALT-C24: presenting, and (re)connecting⤴

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Last week I was lucky enough to attend and present at the annual ALT-C conference. I was only there for a day but, as always, it was such a tonic to catch up with lots of colleagues from across the sector. Thanks to everyone who came to our session on the Jisc Beyond Blended Resources.

The ALT-C conferences always do seem like the start of a new term (that’ll be the timing I hear you say), and have always provided that, imho, really important opportunity to catch up with people.

As ever, ALT did an amazing job of streaming sessions for those who couldn’t make it in person. Sadly, due to the current financial situation most universities are in just now, there seems to be more of those. Cutting staff and staff development are always the easy targets for cut backs . . .

However, one positive that I did take away was another re-connection. This time with social media. Like so many others, I left Twitter as it transitioned into X. There was a void for sure, sort of filled by Mastadon, not so much Threads (still can’t figure out the why of it!), and a lot more LinkedIn. The latter more for its focus and improved app experience – tho finding anything again is still a bit of “a mare”.

I have adjusted to less instant social media contact, but had joined Bluesky, oh quite a while ago. TBH I had kind of forgotten about it. But the week before ALT-C I did get a raft of new (legit and interesting) followers. Turns out I was part of a list circulating of people to follow. At the conference it really did seem to fill that Twitter void.

It kind of reminded me of when Twitter started. I couldn’t really see the point of it. I mean why would you want to tell everyone what you were doing? Why would anyone be interested? Wasn’t that a bit creepy ? But then I went to a conference and experienced a (small)conference back channel for the the fist time and realised how useful it could be. I saw the conversational aspect to it all, and was hooked. Lucky me to have been there when at the start – before all the adverts, influencers, haters . . . And being able to share my work on Twitter really did help with my professional development and expansion of my PLN.

It feels a bit more like those early days in Bluesky just now. A place for connecting and sharing without adverts, or (at this point) too much hate speak. So I will be there a bit more often now, you can find me there @sheilmcn.bsky.social.

This image was created with the Word press AI generator

15 years and Twitter is always counting . . .⤴

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Yesterday I got a notification from Twitter that it was #myTwitterAnniversary. They helpfull created a little post for me to share too.

15 feels like a significant number. 15 years is a significant amount of time – a good chunk of my working life. Over the past 15 years I know I have benefited from being on, and active in Twitter. Being active on twitter really effectively extended my PLN and my professional reach. Particularly back in “the early days”, those days before ads, of 140 characters, before Twitter tried to be “helpful” by organising your feed . . .

I’ve always treated twitter a bit like a series of conversations. Some are useful, some are informative, some are inspiring and thought provoking some are just silly. I’m still very lucky in that I haven’t suffered from any serious trolling but that is, and continues to be, the seriously down side of twitter. I’ve never really been that bothered about missing anything on twitter, if it’s relevant I’ll find out some how, and if I’m late to that particular conversation then there’s probably a good reason for it.

Of course my interactions and conversations have waxed and waned over the past 15 years. I know I don’t tweet as much now as say 8 years ago, maybe even 4 years ago, but it still draws me in. Even if it’s just to say hello on a grey Tuesday morning . . . sometimes I just need that.

For me, Twitter is still a useful space to share and to find out things. But my active network has and is, constantly changing. Thanks to twitter’s “helpful” algorithms and promoted tweets, and the sheer volume of stuff in my stream I don’t always see things from people. But that’s natural, if I’m not near people how can I join their conversation? I’m probably not who they need to speak to. There are certainly more topics now that I don’t feel a need to keep up with.

At times I do feel a sense of loss. I miss conversations with some people I used to “tweet with”. I can sometimes see bits and pieces of conversations – or perhaps conversation starters – that look interesting . . . They don’t exclude me as such, as I can see them and could join in, but I guess I have less of a need to be seen to be active. I am much better and managing my time and focusing my time.

Still, 15 years is a long time, and I do get a bit nostalgic at times for those I came, I saw, I tweeted, therefore I might matter days. However, I’m now at an age that I can be more selective and less sensitive about twitter FOMO. Of course there are always conversations to be had, and connections to be sustained and created, and I guess that’s what keeps me on “the Twitter”. It’s still useful and keeps me connected, listening and talking to people that matter to me.

I was going to share some probably boring stats about my twitter activity, but I’m still waiting to get an updated archive of my tweets from Twitter – I guess 15 years is a lot of tweets, enough to bork a TAGS explorer sheet or 2!

picture of number 15

WordCamp Edinburgh, thoughts #wcedin⤴

from @ wwwd – John's World Wide Wall Display

I just spent Saturday and half of Sunday at WordCamp Edinburgh 2017. This is only my third WordCamp, but I though it might be worth typing up a few impressions.

The camp was very nicely organised, ran to time, had good food, the venue was great. Minimal friction for attendees.

The vibe was quite like a TeachMeet although most of the presentations were an hour long and a bit more formal. I guess Wordcamp like TM has its roots in Bar Camp? Compared to a TeachMeet the sponsored were more visible and more part of the community. This felt fine as I guess most of the attendees were professional working alongside the sponsors. (I am not a fan of the over sponsorship of TeachMeets)

The talks were very varied, some technical, some business related. All the ones I went to were informative and enjoyable. There seemed to be a strong strand about using WordPress for the good, democracy and social change.

Social Good

Two of the keynotes were to do with this idea of social good. The opening one on day one was by Leah Lockhart, who talked about helping community groups and local politicians to communicate. I felt there were a lot in common with eduction. Schools have embraced online communication in the same sort of way, veering towards twitter ( probably less Facebook that community groups) as an easy way to get messages out. In the same way they lose control of their information and its organisation. Leah spoke of the way WordPress could give you a better long term result.

Leah also explained that it is hard for community groups to be able to design how their information gets out. I think we are at the point where WordPress is easy enough to use the difficulty comes in using it in a strategic way that maximises its potential. I’ve got a fair bit of experience in helping schools use WordPress in a practical sense and there is plenty of online help for that. There is a gap to be filled in the preparation and planning. If this is solved for community groups it might be easy to repurpose the information and processes for education.

Bridget Hamilton spoke of Using WordPress to create social change. Her story of her site Verbal Remedy was inspirational. A blog provide effective communication without much in the way of backing.

Technical

I went to a few of the more technical talks.

Mark Wilkinson spoke of ‘a deep understanding of actions and filters’. Since I mess around with code in WordPress at a very basic level this was a really useful talk for me. It was just pitched at the right level. I’ve used these with only a basic understanding. I think Mark got me to the point I could being to understand things a lot better the next time I dip in. Mark’s Slides

Tom Nowell spoke about the WordPress Rest API for beginners, he meant beginners with the API not generally. I held on by the skin of my teeth. Luckily I follow Tom Woodward and had played with the API in a much simpler way than either Tom documented. Yesterday I added a wee bit to my homepage to pull in the last status from my blog! Tom’s Slides

Twitter vs Blogs

Franz Vitulli talked about aspects of the pull between Social media and blogging it was good to hear another view of the area I’ve been reading and thinking about from an indieweb point of view.

Progressive Enhancement

Ben Usher Smith gave this talk, at first I thought it was a bit out of my wheelhouse, but it became apparent that the process of progressive enhancement can be applied to any sort of enterprise. I hope to be more aware of this when planning for my class next session. Ben’s post Progressive enhancement — More than just works without JavaScript on medium.

Even More…

I went to a few other talks all of which I enjoyed. Even the ones I though I was choosing almost at random had something interesting to them. Often it was in thinking about how the ideas or principles fitted into my world.

I took notes during the talks using Little Outliner 2, this meant I could publish as I went along: Notes from #wcedin. I am really liking using an outliner for this process, although I don’t think an iPad was as good as a laptop would have been. There are a few different links and thoughts there.

After I got back I feed the twitter hash tag into Tags, Martin Hawksey’s tool. This gives me TAGSExplorer: Interactive archive of twitter conversations from a Google Spreadsheet for #wcedin .

I probably missed a few opportunities to talk to folk, I found myself feeling a bit less social than I do in my TeachMeet comfort zone. But the atmosphere was very relaxed and inclusive. I’d recommend educators with an interest in blogging to join in if there is a Wordcamp near them.

The Loudest Voices⤴

from @ John's World Wide Wall Display

best-tweets

A classroom, like any other social group will have popular pupils, the ones who get heard most by other pupils. I guess a teachers job is to encourage participation for all learners.

We have to think if software companies are the best people to curate our information.

A While back I turned off the setting in twitter to show me the ‘best tweets’ first. I noted that I hadn’t noticed this being turned on.

Yesterday I found a new setting, not sure when it happened, and tweeted turning it off with a gif:

quality-filter

I don’t want Twitter being a quality filter.

This got a couple of interesting replies and I put in a few more pence worth:

 

I don’t really do Facebook 1 but it is even further done the algorithmic path.

I presume the algorithms will be designed with the end goal of getting more ad views, not for what is ‘best’ for the user or community. They may also have negative effects on a learning community see: Participant association and emergent curriculum in a MOOC: can the community be the curriculum? | Bell | Research in Learning Technology, which I’ve read too quickly a couple of times now.

I don’t suppose there is much to do about this in the short term other than turning off settings when we can. Longer term it might be wise to think about the IndieWeb.

Featured Image: A screenshot…

PS. This post is mostly a few tweets, I’ve been thinking that interesting things often get lost in the stream, and pulling out a bunch might be useful.

  1. I did take part in a very useful mini-mooc and have heard of great educational examples but I tend to steer clear. ↩