Twitter 501 blog post

It’s warm today…about 12 degrees, the snow is nearly all melted, and today I am enjoying an extended listen to the sounds of Thee Silver Mt. Zion. Maybe I’m a little too pensive for my own good on this overcast spring day, and maybe I should be pressing harder to get my projects further ahead, but since so close to Easter, I almost feel my Self slowing down for a well needed rest after such an intense and laborious winter season.

I suppose now is the time of year when I usually get out my worn copy of Siddhartha, and let Hesse’s words carry me through the spring time. This year, much like last year, my master’s project has me running crazy to meet deadlines so there hasn’t been any Siddhartha for me for nearly three years. Still, I carry forward the many readings I’ve enjoyed about Hesse’s character, and springtime reminds me of the renewing of the earth into a time of bounty that will arrive upon us in a few weeks as the trees, flowers and grass begin to bud. Likewise, as I mentioned, my project is also returning full circle from within itself, as it emerges into a larger scope of understanding about research into leadership capacity.

In thinking of the ‘full circle’ of connectedness between myself and my friends, and the unbroken circle between my studies and my professional career, I’d like to begin this week’s blog with a couple of boss infographics I always enjoy referring back to that make me realize that even 40 or 50 years ago, the recursive and reflexive nature of systems thinking was nearly as prevalent as it is today, but that technology was still striving to catch up with the advanced thinking patterns of modern civilization.

Check these out:

Each week I am totally engrossed in learning about Web2 tech from Lee LeFever’s In Plain English videos, and this week is no exception. I am presently gleaning the university eJournal database for current research related to Twitter, and there is some information available, but this weeks Trailfire has a plethora of text material that can’t be beat. However, Joanne linked us to a Trailfire article that, IMO, trumps the Plain English video for Twitter: Charlene Kingston’s Twitter for Beginners (SocialMediaDIYWorkshop.com, 2010). Topics included in this eBook are (and I will list each page/chapter because this resource is SOOO well organized, so exhaustive, and so intuitive to 21^st century learners):

Why you need this

What is Twitter?

Twitter is Like A Party

What Do People Tweet?

You Twitter Goal

Your Twitter Profile

Account Checklist

Whom Should I Follow?

How Do I Find People?

Twitter Timelines

Someone Followed Me

Twitter Community

What Do I Tweet?

Tweets With Links

Retweets

@Replies

Direct Messages

Tweet Anatomy

Twitter Anatomy (cont.)

Tweet Status

Conversation Tips

The More, The Merrier

Weekly Twitter Activity

Twitter To Go

Twitter & Text Messages

Keys For Success

About the Author

I am still getting accustomed to blogging on a blogpage, and my experience with microblogging is still seriously underdeveloped. I installed the TwitterBar app for FireFox, and it is useful for popping a quick Tweet while working/surfing, but I haven’t been able to find my own identity as a Tweeter yet this term because of the intense amount of work that each of the WEB2 tools has required from me, a newbie to Web2.0 technology. This week will hopefully prove to be rewarding through experiential learning, and I look forward to Friday to see how my Twitter profile/account has developed from the resources I will use to make my voice heard.

~rob

Sunday

Okay, today I was totally crazy with getting the first section of my master’s project completed, and by afternoon my brain was running in two modes: first, it was trying not to think about leadership capacity; second, it was 100% absolutely primed to work, to think, to analyze, and to generate thought. So, I’m sure you are thinking that I opted for route two, and I got totally immersed in more data, right?! Well, uh, you see, hmmm, uh, I chose for the first of the two streams because I really needed a break after the amount of work I’d done during the past two weeks.

I read and organized my research for this week’s posting, and I found a number of useful articles about Twitter that helped me to make sense of Twitter, and microblogging in general.

To be honest, I ended up bouncing from Tweeter to Tweeter, and I actually spent 6 hours reading tweets from other users. Regrettably, reading Tweets doesn’t net a higher final grade for a course, but the knowledge and information acquired from learning how to navigate using a social networking utility is priceless.

I read Atkinson’s (2010) interesting book review of The Backchannel: How Audiences Are Using Twitter and Social Media and Changing Presentations Forever, and I was pleased to read that conferences now offer a screen for everyone in the audience to see what is being Tweeted about during the conference. This was a concern that I raised during class last summer, that there were 40 or so students in the classroom, yet there was no venue for us to communicate with one another during the presentations. How much knowledge would be available for conference organizers to collect comments from audience as participants in conversation about the discussion created and maintained by the speaker. And, while I don’t think it is necessary for the speaker to engage in the dialog, it would be great to be able to post a question that could be monitored and placed in queue for the speaker to address at the end of the talk. There have been too many instances when I was at a conference and felt that there should be more connection between members of the audience to generate increased rapport with the topic and, inadvertently, with the speaker. I can only hope that the future finds more interactive discussion between classmates in a lecture hall to get students involved. I mean, MTV allows me to send texts to their broadcasts to say hi to friends who are also watching the same shows, so why in the world can’t institutions of higher learning provide a more life-like venue for communications between students?

Okay, and one last point I really need to address: Neil Gaiman’s use of Twitter to create online stories! Way to go Neil! I remember when I was in teacher’s college at Althouse, I was in class, and I wrote the first line of a story and I asked each student in the class to write the next consecutive line for the story until everyone had contributed to the story which I took time to illustrate. Neil has done the same thing online using Twitter, and I think that is a beautiful use of technology to create a wonderful piece of sociological history. I think Neil has an advantage because he already had followers interested in his works because of his established status as an author, but that is an aside for such a brilliant idea. (*I am tipping my hat to Neil*)

~rob

Monday and Tuesday

My Twitter account is more active these days, and I am posting a few items here and there, but I can’t say I’ve found my Twitter voice. I have a lot to learn about to integrate my readings into a networking tool that requires such a limited number of characters, yet requires the same expressiveness that a ‘full-size’ blog requires. The language-specific format of Twitter is also somewhat intimidating for a new user. It would be so easy, I mean wa-a-a-a-y too easy to take on the luddite approach that Keen talks about in his March/April 2010 article Reinventing the Luddite: An Interview with Andrew Keen. Being new to Twitter, and somewhat resistant to acquiring a new vocabulary for its use, I find myself agreeing far too much with Keen’s cynical view of the Internet. Even agreeing with Keen makes me feel embarrassed, and like a nabob for not giving Twitter a fair shot before getting to know the tool intimately; I suppose I might be looking for a way out even before committing to the tool.

While I am still bouncing from Tweeter to Tweeter, I learned from e-Connect journal (2010) that “A Twibe is a group of Twitter users interested in a common topic….”  So, back to Twitter For Beginners for me!

When I log in to Twitter I find my account is receiving new posts from other users, and when I follow some of the directions from the Twitter For Beginners, the system doesn’t provide the search results for me like I think it should. I like Kingston’s (2010) analogy that “Twitter is like walking through a large party and eavesdropping on conversations as you walk past people.” However, I’m not sure what I am hearing because the language used by Tweeters is not familiar to me. I looked through Kingston’s ebook, but did not find a lexicon for understanding the contractive forms of words most Twitter users speak with.

Kingston’s story about Twitter makes sense about how people are communicating, and the examples she provides on page six are excellent, but they don’t clearly explain how to get involved in a conversation with others. It seems that by making a post I am posting to everyone, and not to a specific person or group of people I’ve learned are called a Twibe.

I realize that I must seem delayed in my use of this tool, but two days of little accomplishment have left me frustrated to no end.

~rob

Wednesday

I spent the night playing with the settings, design, background, profile, connections, notices… and still nothing to show for my attempts to harness the power of this utility.

Kingston (2010) provides a guide for getting users engaged in dialog, and I tried using some of these ideas, but my posts aren’t flowing the way I hoped they would. Here is one of Kingston’s lists:

Here are some suggestions for tweet ideas:

- What you are doing (but don’t be boring).

- Your current business challenge.

- What you are reading with details so others can read along (if interested).

- Announce a new blog post, press release, product release, promotion, etc.

- Share an insight or humorous look at your current challenges or situation.

- Ask a question. Your followers may have an opinion or offer you some insight based on

their own experiences.

I replied to a Tweet made by one of the people I am following, even though I am not sure how I became their follower, or why I am following AsteroidWatch, but I replied to their Tweet, and Twitter indicated that I am not able to post for some reason.

Thursday and Friday

Still not able on either of these days to bring my understanding to the fore, and while I am becoming more proficient with reading and following Twitter users, my posts only get out to the general Twitter community, and I can’t figure out how to get engaged in a one-on-one conversation with other users. When I make a Tweet, I am not able to make the posting appear as a bit.ly file that Kingston explains in her eBook. I followed the steps in the book again over these two days, I mean, I have followed the steps from page one through page 29, and I am not able to get a hang of how to use Twitter. I think my initial enthusiasm about the eBook was too high because I was looking for a quick solution to being able to use Twitter. I watched the Twitter In Plain English video again on Thursday, but I was not able to get enough information from the video to make a successful post that was a reply to another users, or to be able to send a Twitter from my email, nor to send a Twitter to my email account.

I keep thinking back to the Luddite article (Keen, 2010) I read earlier this week, but I don’t want to admit defeat with this tool since I have had pretty good success with all of my experiences so far this term, despite delays and setbacks (*see VoiceThread post*).

I am not sure what or how I am doing incorrectly, but I will have to take a break since I will be away Saturday and Sunday. I will try again Sunday evening to get my Twitter account up to speed.

~rob

Sunday

Okay, I tried using the # symbol again this evening in an attempt to search Twitter for posts related to #Lost, my favorite show. But, there is nothing appearing through Twitter when I enter this term in the search box.

I am still not able to reply or retweet for some reason. I will keep using Twitter until I can make this tool work for me, because I am really getting the hang of it, but a week with Twitter is not enough for me, and I still can’t figure out why this is the case.

Reflections on the process of learning about the tool

Learning this week seems to be hitting a deficit with me for some reason. Despite the six or seven hours each night that I spent trying to use my Twitter account, I was unable to pull my learning together into a comprehensible form. That’s not to say I learned nothing, au contraire! This week I learned a lot about Twitter from the readings I did through Joanne’s Trailfire, and through the readings I collected from the university eJournal database, but it seems that none of the instructions I encountered during this week were enough to provide clear enough insight according to my learning style that could present a clear enough picture in my mind to give me a successful jump-off point to use this social networking utility effectively. I read Cindy King’s (2010) article 8 Easy Ways to Network on Twitter with interest, and I tried following the steps Cindy lists for being a successful Twitter user, but I was not able to make the # symbol net the results I wanted from my week on Twitter:

#4: Shout Out to Others

If you want to connect with someone on Twitter and just don’t know where to start, here are some ways of simply shouting out to people on Twitter to get them to notice you.

• Consider mentioning them for #FollowFriday.  You do this by simply saying something nice about the person, include their Twitter ID and “#FollowFriday” or “#ff”.
•  

I think with more exposure to this tool I will find great success in using it. I remember how Joanne talked about using one of her accounts for connecting with family, and another account for career use. I hope that I can get to a level of proficiency that I will be able to differentiate and delineate what my own needs are with each tool, and to be able to have followers and people I follow whom I know well enough to receive postings from me without getting offended. I have been trying to make replies to people I follow, but none of the replies seem to work, and I don’t want to send AsteroidWatch 200 Tweets of Hi, or ‘just checking to see if this works’.

I found some people linked as friends on my Facebook account, but was not able to successfully get a Tweet linked to them either.

Is it just me? Or is it possible there might actually be an issue with my Twitter account? I really think it must be me in this case, because I can post a Tweet to the Twitter community and it posts, it is just that I cannot get my posts to individual users successfully: I tried Joanne and Brandi, but with no result. I really wish one of the Twitter geniuses would publish an eBook Twitter Troubleshooting with a list of common fixes drawn from websites where people post their issues with a Web2 tools. Trust me, if I knew how to gather such information I would definitely get to writing such a book tomorrow.

Discussion of the tool in terms of my own personal learning

I think I can accurately provide a response to my own personal learning with Twitter during the past week. I started this week a little bit skeptical about Twitter because I mistakenly read Keen’s (2010) article about Ludditism related to Twitter. Fortunately, when I caught myself being a Luddite I was able to push Keen’s voice into oblivion and focus on the task at hand: using Twitter to communicate with others. Unfortunately, I was not able to make my communications known to other in ways I wanted to, and I am really feeling a strong sense of discouragement and frustration with Twitter, which is disappointing because it seems to be the most talked about tool of all the Web2 tools we’ve researched this term. Every news cast, most weekly shows, all websites are promoting Twitter, but I have found non success with this game. My own learning is that I am very familiar with Twitter, and I now know my account inside and out. I have read the step-by-step guides to using Twitter, but the steps for me don’t seem to produce the results I need. My experience with Twitter seem very reflective of the title of Sexton’s (2010) article The Day the Search Stood Still. Sexton’s introductory quote sums up the feelings I have about searching Twitter this week: “At the very least, we ought to recognize that the concept of ‘discovery’ has outgrown the confines of the functionality known as ‘search.’” This week truly became a lesson in discovery, when I intended it to begin and end as a search and conquer mission. Flexibility is a virtue when it comes to learning with Web2 tools.

Discussion of the tool in terms of teaching and learning

Young’s (2010) article Teaching with Twitter: Not for the faint of heart, raises an important issue for technology in the classroom.

“Opening up a Twitter-powered channel in class—which professors at other universities are experimenting with as well—alters classroom power dynamics and signals to students that they’re in control. Fans of the approach applaud technology that promises to change professors’ role from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side.” Those phrases are familiar to education reformers, who have long argued that education must be more interactive to hold the interest of today’s students.”

My experience with education in general is that 21^st century learners in the Alberta school system are intuitively wired to need a classroom guide as opposed to a teacher. Even without Twitter, the days of a sole distributor of knowledge in the classroom called a teacher are passé. Students want develop personal connections with the facilitators who plan lessons and work to create and fosters classrooms environs in which students can explore and discover knowledge in a scaffolded environment. Students are taught early-on in their school experiences, (kindergarten and grade one) to investigate, practice, explore, and try new ways of learning, with provincial curricula indicating this is the best practice for new learners to develop skills. Twitter may be viewed as a scapegoat to shift attention away from older teaching styles that haven’t caught up with constructivism.

My own recent university experience indicates that professors are trying their best to integrate technology into their teaching practices, but that students, themselves, must take more ownership of their own learning if they are to participate as coconstructors of knowledge in learning environment or in power relationships of decision-making.

~rob

References

Adult Ed Twibe (2010). Techniques. Mar, 60. Retrieved from http://www.library.ualberta.ca/databases/databaseinfo/

Atkinson, C. (2010). [Review of the bookThe back channel: How audiences are using twitter and social media and changing presentations forever]. Available From University of Alberta Web site http://www.library.ualberta.ca/databases/databaseinfo/

Gaiman, N. (2010) Twitter tale takes off. Scholastic Scope 58(12) 3.

Garcia, D. (2010, Oct). Hey Jude. Infographic posted to loveallthis.tumblr.com

Jeannr (2010, Oct) For the better understanding of “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Infographic posted to jennr.tumblr.com

Keen, A. (2010) Reinventing the Luddite: An interview with Andrew Keen. The Futurist, Mar/Apr, 35-36.

LeFever, L. (Producer). (2010, March 20). Twitter in Plain English. Common Craft Podcast retrieved from http://trailfire.com/joannedegroot/trailview/77917

Sexton, W. (2010) The day the search stood still. Jan/Feb, 6-12. Retrieved from www.infotoday.com

Young, J. (2010) Teaching with twitter: Not for the faint of heart. The Education Digest, Mar, 9-12.

Social Networking Sites 501 Blog Post

Social Networking

Social Networking in Plain English…amazing! Makes it all seems so easy to get connected and stay connected with friends, family and peers. In fact, it almost made me want to see how far I could push the envelope for finding: a new job; a new partner; and, a great place to live!!

One of my favorite pastimes is Ham Radio. In respect of my own anonymity in the webosphere, I will refrain from posting my callsign. But, I will share a little bit of history with you about my journey into amateur radio.

My Elmer, mentor, leader, role model, and guide through the journey was an awesome man who inspired me to pursue not only my basic qualifications to operate a ‘radio station’, but also to get my morse code certification while Canada still required it to own radios of certain power, and specific capabilities. As with every area of specialization, there are phrases, terms, idiomatic expressions, and terminology that users in that arena are required to assimilate into their bank of personal/professional knowledge in order to be successful in said arena. It is regrettable that mandatory morse testing was dropped from amateur radio in Canada, because it really required a radio operator to use a language that was specific to radio operations.

My Elmer was a retired firefighter, who spent 40 years helping others, saving lives, dealing with others’ mistakes, and trying to educate people about how to be responsible in the face of the considerable power of combustibles. I stumbled upon this individual not by chance, but by circumstance. I was back in Canada after a long absence in Asian Russia, and I had no way to communicate in realtime with friends I made, and family I reconnected with while traveling. Ham radio seemed like the most natural method of ‘keeping in touch’ with that area of the world. I found that, if I sent a package to them, or when my mother sent packages to me while there, the packages would get to me already opened, with the best contents removed (read: stolen) by locals, mail authorities, buerocrats who justified the theft as payment for allowing foreigners in their regions, or by mail transporters who got hungry while delivering the post. If I sent a letter to friends and family around the world, the mail was inevitably opened, sometimes lost, and ALWAYS read by others, so nothing was really secret. I approached my Elmer in Canada indicating my desire to use ham radio to send open, short messages by morse code to local postal outlets in various towns, villages, hamlets, and scattered settlements across Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, through Siberia, and up into Arkangel where postal workers would receive the morse transmissions, decode them into Russian, and deliver the messages to my family and friends’ mail boxes at their houses. I’m not even sure where a telegraph station is located in Alberta, but I can assure you that every city block east of the Carpathians has a telegraph station, where average people send telegrams for low-cost, at high-speed to others. I remember sending a telegram ahead of me as I left Piter to visit Sochi. The telegram was sent immediately, and my aunt got the paper transcription of my message an hour later delivered to her door.

Not only was ham radio effective for helping me to get morse code messages to friends and family, but it introduced me to an entirely different world of people who were connecting with one another literally at the speed of light around the world. Many a night my Elmer would call me on my handheld radio during the wee hours of the morning, demanding me to bring him two blueberry fritters and two extra large Tim Horton’s Double-Double coffees because “the bands are wide open, and I’m making contact in deep valleys in Italy, Chile, China (or wherever).” And, off I’d speed from my small house, cruise over to the local Timmy’s, get the booty for my Elmer, and jet to his place where we’d make contacts around the world while the atmosphere was quiet with solar activity. It was amazing to talk, in realtime, with no delay, to persons in extremely remote locations, and develop a network of ‘colleagues’ around the globe who would try to meet one another at specified times on certain days of the year to swap stories about long distance (called DX) contacts we’d made. I remember speaking to the space station on one occasion, but it wasn’t as thrilling as I thought, because there were no obstructions between earth and space to overcome! So, for me, social networking has always been an important aspect of my personal development, and finding new methods of contact was only a game to play, to figure out how to get messages around to many people at one time, so we could all share ideas with one another in an open venue.

Today, social networking has a new visage, and utility-specific language that accompanies the use of each tool for getting one’s messages out to their audiences. Another

Sunday

Today I spent touring around Ning, getting caught up in the many digressions available to a wayward mind on a Sunday afternoon that is looking for distraction. I created/joined a few Ning networks. Ning instructions are not as clear as I would have hoped them to be. Although today’s post is rather short, I learned a whole lot abut how to use Ning, and how other Ning users are integrating technology into their classrooms by reading countless posts about success and failure stories dealing with Web2 and technology in schools.

Monday

Today was Facebook day, when I updated my account that, well, hasn’t been exactly dormant during recent weeks, but didn’t receive full attention because of the various other Web2 tools and utilities I have been exploring. I am very pleased with how many new friends I have on FBook, and with how well received many of my postings on friends’ boards have been commented on. I was astounded to read Iyengar, Han and Gupta’s 2009 statistics about Facebook, “Social networks have become a cultural phenomenon. Facebook, one of the largest social networking sites in the U.S. was founded in 2004. By February 2009, it boasts more than 175 million active users and continues to grow rapidly. Worldwide these users spend 3.0 billion minutes each day on Facebook. More than 850 million photos and 5 million videos are uploaded on the site each month.” And, that, according to Leitner and Grechenig (2008), users are connecting with one another on the bases of “common language or shared racial, sexual, religious, or nationality based identities. Sites also vary in the extent to which they incorporate new information and communication tools, such as mobile connectivity, blogging and photovideo- sharing.” With users connecting to other users through literally hundreds of millions of Social Networking Sites (SNS’s), from which is drawn this sample of “100 different social networks as the following, listed in alphabetical order: Amiglia, Amitize, Anobii, aSmallWorld, Asoboo, B4class, Badoo, Bebo, BeRecruited, Blogtronix, BooksConnect, BottleTalk, Boxedup, BuzzNet, Campusbug, Capazoo, CarDomain, CarGurus, Change, Cingo, CircleUp, CitizenBay, Classmates, Coastr, College, College Tonight, ColShare, CompanyLoop, DeviantArt, Dogster, Doostang, Eons, Etsy, Facebook, FaceParty, Famster, FanNation, FastPitch, Flickr, Flingr, Flip, Flixster, Friendster, Gather, Geni, Graduates, Groovr, GuildCafe, Habbo, Hi5, iHipo, ImageKind, iYomu, Kaboodle, KinCafe, Kinzin, Konnects, LastFM, Lawyrs, LibraryThing, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Lovento, Mahalo, Meetup, Multiply, Mycool, MySpace, Netlog, Ning, Orkut, Pairup, Pandora, Passado, Piczo, Plazes, RateItAll, Reunion, Revish, Ryze, Shelfari, Shoppero, Spoke, StudiVZ, StyleFeeder, Stylehive, Tagged, Takkle, ThisNext, TravBuddy, Tribe, Twango, Twitter, Vox, Wishpot, Xanga, Xing, Xuqa, Yelp and Zooomr.” (Leitner & Grechenig, 2008)

My own Facebook account is riddled with ‘friends’ who are friends of friends, but are business opportunities looking to advertise their pay-for-use services to continue to remain friends. This week, I found an excellent video about how to use Facebook:



While I realize that Facebook is not the only SNS, it is, by far one of the most common sites for users. Tonight I tried customizing my Fbook account, again, but had difficulties figuring out how to import the customizable wallpaper background for my account. I’m confident with my use of Web2 tools these days, so I cannot imagine how intimidating it must be for newbies with no background in technology at all….

Tuesday

Tonight I logged in to MySpace, also for the first time in a very long time. I like MySpace, and the functionality it offers users. While there are extensions and apps that a users can add, there is so much more functionality to MySpace. And, when I log in to my account, I like that I can have my playlist already dropping tunes for me to hear. I was able to add a new app to MySpace, but when I logged in I spent too long trying to update my profile. I’m thinking there must have been some sort of internal server error that kept me from editing my profile beyond the addition of a single app. In fact, at the end of a long night of trying to get MySpace to react, it ended up crashing FireFox on me several times, so I left the editing process there for the night. I decided to turn my efforts to reading more about social networking, and how online identities are created, monitored and measured by users in SNS’s. First off, though, I really like Park’s (2003, p.50) definition of found an excellent definition of social networking, and social networking analysis, “A social network is a set of nodes (people, organizations or other social entities) connected by a set of relationships, such as friendship, affiliation or information exchange (Wasserman & Faust, 1994). SNA is a set of research procedures for identifying structures in social systems based on the relations among the system components (also referred to as nodes) rather than the attributes of individual cases.”

Harrison and Thomas (2009) relate a qualitative research approach to online identity creation, “(f)irstly, they outline the core concept of identity, which refers to the way in which users develop their online profiles and list of friends to carry out four important community processes:
1. Impression management is concerned with personal identity formation, in which users define their own identities through the information they provide in their profile, and the extent to which they make it public or private in the community and thereby send out identity signals to others.
2. Friendship management is linked to impression management in that users use publicly displayed profiles of others to choose who they would like to include as friends on their list, that is, they look at the identity markers of other users as a benchmark for establishing levels of social interaction.
3. Network structure relates to the roles that users play in the social community in which they participate. Some users will be fairly passive and have a restricted personal network. Others will be active posters of information, and build up intricate networks of friends. Others will play an even greater role in actively promoting and developing the SNS as a whole, by setting up groups and communities and posting publicly available information to encourage interaction.
4. Bridging of online and offline social networks, which is concerned with the degree to which the SNS becomes an integral part of the users’ actual life while offline (Turkle 1995).

From my own experience, I have tried my best to limit the use of my name, location, and relations to family in my SNSs, and it is difficult when making friends, not to share personal information, and bonds of trust should first be developed between myself and other users before I provide contact email addresses, or personal information.
Despite the length of the following quote, I think it only appropriate that my own personal interests in the works of Milton Erickson and Lev Vygotsky should be recognized as contributing to a dialog surrounding SNSs. Harrison and Thomas (2009, p. 115):
“Social Interactionism:
The role played by what Erikson (1968) terms ‘other significant people’ has been recognised as a fundamental concept in social interactionism. Vygotsky’s (1978) notion of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and Feuerstein et al.’s (2003) idea of Instrumental Enrichment, stressed that mediation is fundamental to all human development including learning. Successful learning is seen as being dependent on how learners interact with the people around them in order to overcome problems they cannot solve by themselves, so that they can move to the next stage of development that lies in the ZPD. The role of the significant other or mediator (also referred to as the ‘more knowledgeable other’ or MKO) is to attempt to find ways of helping the other person to learn. While Vygotsky noted the centrality of language as an essential tool used by humans to carry out mediation, Feuerstein et al. (2003) emphasized the fundamental role of mediators in the transmission of culture. In this way we can see that the concept of mediation provides us with a means to examine the roles of both language and culture in human development.”

I am a convinced that Social Networking Sites provide a shared social construction that mimics face-to-face human relationships, but provide greater safety in the interactions by allowing, as Harrison and Thomas note, respect for each individual’s Zone of Proximal Development, as well as each users Social Territorial Imperative.

This has been quite a plate of food for thought this evening. I will keep my readings up, and hope to share them with you later this week.

~rob

Wednesday and Thursday




















































Two days were spent creating new accounts for, and navigating through LastFm.com; LinkedIn.com; Zoomr.com; thinkfree.com; Ask.com; MetaCafe.com; LiveStreamTV; Pandora.com; ODEO.com; hi5.com; and bebo.com. There is so much available to newcomers into the webosphere, but unfortunately there isn’t enough time in the day to join a community, get engaged in learning what each community has to offer, and still get enough sleep to make the work day easier!

~rob


Friday

Today I returned to Facebook and MySpace, with greater success this time around. I was able to make changes to my profile, and update not only friends lists, but to change settings which I had been unable to do prior to today. I reread Michael Blanding's (2009) article, Thanks for the add. Now help me with my homework. I am very impressed with how 'on the mark' I believe Blanding is. Learning styles have changed considerably in the past five years as our society shifts to a more visual/kinesthetic demographic. I think that teaching needs to reflect a more visual/kinesthetic nature if we are to 'hook' kids into becoming excited about learning. I was pleased to have Joanne link a Trailfire to Stephen's Lighthouse, as that is a  website I have visited numerous times (like weekly) over the past three or four years. I always appreciate Mr. Abrams sense of humor, and the technology reviews he does. Another blog I am totally in love with is ZDNet.com, for news as well as the other treats they offer.

Reflections on the process of learning about the tool

This week the greater majority of my learning was from the journal readings I collected about the history, development, use, and explosion of SNSs during the past ten years, but more specifically since Facebook went public. I am really astounded that so many people are accessing SNSs each day, and so much information is passing through such a simple user interface. This week Stephen Harper used Twitter and YouTube to get his message out to youth, but according to the news his experiment was a bit of a bust because he failed to connect with his audience in ways that the public wanted to him to appear. While I understand that the last US election employed considerable efforts to use social media marketing to reach a demographic of voters that doesn’t typically present as a high voter turnout at the polls, I think there is a disparate sense of comparison between a US leader’s “Change” campaign, and a CDN Prime Minister using social media to ‘get to know’ we, the plebes, in Canadian society. The most recent articles I located in the ERIC, CBCA, and ProQuest databases through the university databases using the search terms +social +networking +facebook +myspace +twitter netted results that deal with analyses of social networking utilities. It is alarming to see the amount of research committed to employing social networking tools to gain greater shares of social capital in online communities. I wonder if the youth of today really have even a fighting chance to limit their exposure to the great machine that has billions of dollars invested in using social networking and social media marketing to increase the purchasing habits of today’s youth. My personal interest in appreciating the diversity of humankind leaves me wondering if the push to modernize southeast Asia and Africa by the year 2030 isn’t just a push by NGO producers to find greater markets in which they can sell their goods and harness the purchasing desires of developing nations by having them mass produce disposable items for distribution in developed nations….

Discussion of the tool in terms of my own personal learning

My own personal learning this week, as with most weeks these days, benefited from the numerous errors I made, and shortcomings of knowledge I expressed with editing my existing accounts, and in creating membership in the new communities I joined. There is a great feeling of satisfaction I feel when I have mastered a technology…HA! Mastered! Well, when I have figured out how to create and post using a technology. This week I didn’t get that feeling of satisfaction, like with Animoto last week, or with Voicethread, or even with my PBWorks account.

My school division still blocks access to FBook, MySpace, YouTube, and the majority of other SNSs I highlighted in this week’s post. Students still use the verboten social networking sites, but they are not to talk about them, or try to login to them during school hours. The ban on social networking in schools makes me think my folks growing up in the  60’s, when rock music was still considered to be evil, and it was banned in many areas. How archaic can we really be and still make progress as a society? Are those same people who lived through the evils of rock era the employees running school divisions who are now determining the SNSs are out-of-bounds? What in the world will people say in 30 years from now when they look back on their education and realize how dissimilar schools are to society and the workplace?

Again, my learning this week was really gleaned from the readings I did, and from the difficulties I had with using the simplest tools that even elementary children have mastered!

Discussion of the tool in terms of teaching and learning

I have to be honest that there isn’t much more I can add to what I believe are the benefits and advantages of using social networking sites that Michael Blanding didn’t already mention in his article Thanks for the Add. Now Help Me with My Homework.

When I took over teaching high school classes in my school, the principal told me that class sizes ranged between 6 and 10 students for the options courses, and that it should be easy for my first experience teaching high school (remember, I’m a kindergarten teacher). Well, although I don’t know a whole lot about technology or Web2 tools, I was able to integrate PowerPoint presentations, YoutTube videos, mp3s, videochatting, virtual tours, online games, and various other technologies into out daily lessons, and class enrollment was 46 students, with some sitting on the windowsills, some standing, others sitting on the floor…you get the picture. Students want a school experience that reflects their everyday lives; they want an education they can use. In the 21^st century it is difficult to imagine enabling students with skills they might never use, when there are skill sets readily available to them they are off limits.

Again, there is no way I can add to Blanding’s (2009) article, but I will applaud the subscribers to the blog who left comments sharing stories about the need to reach students by providing them with an education that is emotionally and mentally stimulating so they WANT to learn.

I hope that after I retire from teaching in 32 and ½ years from now, that I will be able to look back and recognize that students enjoyed my classes and went on to use the tools I shared with them. It is amazing, because during our last Elluminate session I asked Joanne how she developed an interest in Web2 tools, and the persons who were influential in aiding Joanne’s development have inspired her to pass on a knowledge of technology to me, and I will likewise pass on the same inspiration to my students, and the spiral seems to continue growing…. It really IS quite amazing!

~rob

References

Blanding, M. (2009). Thanks for the add. Now help me with my homework. Retrieved from http://trailfire.com/joannedegroot/marks/295594

Iyengar, R., Han, S., & Gupta, S. (2009). Do friends influence purchases in a social network? Retrieved from www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/09-123.pdf

LeFever, L. (Producer). (2007, August 6). Social Networking in Plain English. Common Craft. Podcast retrieved from http://trailfire.com/joannedegroot/trailview/61581

Leitner, P., & Grechenig, T. (2008) Social networking sphere: A snapshot of trends, functionalities and revenue models. Retrieved from www.iadis.net/dl/final_uploads/200810C024.pdf

Park, H. (2003). Hyperlink Network Analysis: A New Method for the Study of Social Structure on the Web. Connections 25(1), 49-61.

Multimedia sharing/mashups 501 blogpost

Social Media 

My teaching duties are split between kindergarten mornings, and high school afternoons. At report card time, most ECS parents want to know how their children are developing socially, and what aspects of their childrens’ daily activities are progressing best. High school report cards are a different story. I remember the last high school report card night I sat at, when one parent in particular came into the gymnasium, where the meetings are held, and while waiting to speak with the teachers of their child, they talked to a client via a Blackberry, checked some documents on their laptop, and responded to a Mic Phone call. One of the questions this parent had for me, was why in the world their child cannot use a cell phone at school. My response was a deferral to school policy stating “no cellphones”, but the issues goes much deeper than a simple student policy.

I am familiar with the nature of that parent’s business, which is a multi-million-dollar-a-year industry. Having spent time with that gentleman, I know that early in the morning, that dad reads the news on his computer at home, checking emails, responding to client concerns, delegating work to subordinates, calling numerous suppliers about contracts, shipping, and, planning for trips that take him out of the country on a weekly basis. His office is his Ford pick-up truck, from which he manages several hotels, three trucking companies, eight time shares around the globe, and three VERY large, high-grossing, local concerns. On top of all that, he has six children that he keeps in contact with via LCD screen. His wife talks about how busy he is, and how much she wishes he were home more. For him to make it to parent-teacher night is almost astounding, but it is even more shocking for him. He believes that school should better reflect the duties and responsibilities that new workers entering the workforce will be expected to perform. His reliance on technology is not an isolate incident. For such a parent to visit a school, and see student work on paper makes him chuckle. Hoping that someday his children will be supervisors, managers, and office managers for the empire he built over a lifetime of industry, he asked me, “what are you teaching them that they can use to make money for me?” My response was candid, yet political, “Sir, you see, the skills we acquire in our classroom enable students to transfer their abilities across a range of interests…” He found this laughable as well. “I see, it’s not you, it’s the system. It’s hard for me to believe that schools haven’t changed in the past 30 years, but society has moved forward, leaving you guys behind!” And so the conversation went as I listened to his perspective about technology. I left report card night realizing there are many more skills our high school graduates need just to get hired by a respectable employer in the 21st century.

That incident took place a year ago, but this week while I was collecting research about social media I encountered Wayne’s (2010) article, Are you wireD?

“Are you wired, connected networked? Are you blogging, videocasting, and getting your feeds on your PC, not your plate? Seen any terrific mashup blogs lately? Recorded your weekly podcast to staff?

Or, are you an analog administrator drowning in a digital world? Regardless of where you sit on the speeding technology train, one thing is absolutely certain – the world of communication is changing. Just watch today’s college students communicate electronically with each other if you doubt the tectonic shift under way. These people are tomorrow’s public school parents.” (p.16) Wayne’s article emphasizes the simplicity and ease with which educators and education-based administrators can connect with the communities they serve via social media mashups, most notably through Twitter, Facebook, podcasting, and district websites. Thus, I am no longer skeptical about including social media in my teaching experience, because of the confidence I’ve gained from our Web2 course.

Sunday

Today was Trailfire day, and I really enjoyed the Social Media In Plain English video. I’m not much a fan of ice cream, and I wish Lee LeFever had used donuts to illustrate the effectiveness of social media, but the point was loud and clear:

Today I watched the video presentation about Animoto, and this seems like a useful, interesting tool. Unfortunately, my digital camera is broken, and I am unable to take pictures today, but I will ask a colleague if I can borrow a camera later this week so I can take photos and make an Animoto. At first glance, Animoto seems to be a web-based movie maker that assembles photos into a linear collage of still images, with options to insert video and audio files for diversity in presentation. I will definitely try to find some way to master this tool by the end of the week.

Voicethread has returned to our course this week! I wasn’t very receptive toward Voicethread a couple of weeks ago when I was hoping to create a simple podcast, and found that voicethread was much more than I needed to make a humble digital recording of my voice, along with a place to host the recording.

Despite the academic nature of our course, I am always interested in using my Web2 exploration to construct artefacts that represent my own personal interests, as well as meeting our course requirements. Like my own students, when I am personally connected to a subject, to a theme I enjoy, I invest more energy into my efforts, because the moment speaks louder when I can contribute to it. Stuart (2009, p.22) relates an important point about the value of engaging social media uses into a library’s experience, similar to my own desire to connect with Web2.0 use through personally relevant material, “Social media—the most popular are blogs, wikis, social network sites, and microblogging offer both opportunities and difficulties in the establishment of metrics: Social media adds a level of qualitative information to the quantitative data traditionally made available through web analytics. However, the quantitative information is often restricted and not easily comparable among sites.” I can definitely agree that, as a user, I feel validated in my contribution to online communities by the comments I share with others, just like the content I give back to the microadobe I live in with my brothers and sisters across the world. When others validate my comments, I am not only more likely to reside in that sphere, but also to bring others there as well. But, it isn’t so much because I am finding solace with like-minded believers to my ideas and ideals, but that my expression contributes to a body of knowledge about a given topic that is important to me. Wikipedia is a venue where I can comment (add knowledge) to several fields of interest that reflect the many aspects of my personality, and the diversity of my understandings. I don’t necessarily feel abashed when an idea or comment has been altered by another user, because that is indicative to me that there is another user who is more of a ‘specialist’ in that area than myself, and I typically follow the postings of such people so I can learn more from them. “The suggestions”, according to Marcoux and Loertscher (2009, p.7), “(and strong ones they are) for incorporating technology into our work so student interest in research and resources may flourish are only as good and as helpful as we make them. So take time to investigate what is out there, use what is most helpful to your situation, and know that this is a world that is rapidly changing. Focus on how to best serve students’ needs and you make the call as to what to use in your environment.” So, with that said, tomorrow I set off on a new journey to follow through with

Monday

Today I created my Animoto account, and I am impressed with how easy it was to get setup. I played around with the account, but my explo’ is limited because I don’t have photos or videos to upload, and I am still wondering what theme my animoto will follow. I watched the complimentary Animoto video a couple of times, partly because it is very well made, and partly because it has a theme I wish I could make mine after.

***Hold on, I think a short update is in order. Last September my digital camera, a Nikon D3000, got busted at school during a game the kids were playing. Last summer my GloFiish was in my pocket when I was fooling around with some of the guys, and the beautiful little machine got crushed as the wrestling match was just getting great and I was starting to win. The hard drive in my laptop recently fried beyond repair. My iPod fell from the seat of my Jeep when I was driving to Montana in the fall, and I didn’t realize my heel was crushing the screen for a couple of hours while on the road. I lost my DSLite at the university during my first summer residence two years ago, and the same week my bicycle was stolen, it was my beautiful Scott Sub20. So, I’m not having much luck with technology these days, and with the rising costs of dorm fees and tuition it is becoming increasingly more and more difficult to scrape together the funds to replace lost, stolen and broken items. My hope is that by next year I will be able to get tech savvy, and be totally connected with my family and friends, and recent classroom acquaintances more often when my masters degree is done. I never realized how important it is to have effective tools to participate in an online community, and how difficult it must be for people who want to engage others in dialog, but feel the same limitations I am constrained with at this point in my life. I read Farkas’ (2009, p.35) article, Governing social media: Protect your library’s brand online with interest. I was particularly interested in how she echoed Joanne’s idea about the blurring of boundaries between public, private, professional, and personal identities across social media utilities: “With online social networking, the lines blur between the personal and professional, simply because one’s audience is often made up of people from various parts of one’s life. My network on Facebook and Twitter consists of family, friends from childhood and college, people from my professional network, and faculty and students at my university. As a result, it’s far more difficult to keep my work and private lives separate online. In a single day, I may tweet about the cute thing my infant son did and the project I’m working on for my library.” For me, theme plays an important role in creating identity, but the theme must also respect the boundaries I am willing to create about how much of my life is available in the webosphere.

So, back to Animoto…. Despite feeling disadvantaged at having few tools for creating the initial resources necessary to share blips about my life with our online community, I will try to find some artefacts to add to my Animoto account to create a project there that are, in the very least, reflective of who I am, and what I do.

Check I again tomorrow and I’ll show you what ideas I came up with!

Tuesday

Tonight was elluminate, and I really enjoyed our talk, and the sidebar chat we had, thanks folks! After two years of online study, my attitude and disposition toward online collaboration, especially online studies, has changed dramatically. Working in seeming isolation to get my work completed, and only to interact with others through delayed monologue has made the past two years very difficult. And, while I realize that this masters degree is an independent research program, independence is challenging when tackling research for the first time. And, since my present Web2 course requires about 35 hours each week for collecting articles, exploring tools, creating artefacts, and evidencing my own personal and professional growth through the utilities, I still have another 35 hours each week to dedicate to the other courses I am taking concurrently; (on top of teaching full-time, working as department head to establish our fledgling tri-lingual languages program, and lastly, to get some sleep at night). I won’t try to tally-up the number of hours I spend on each course, plus working, or it would make me wonder what I am doing to myself through sleep deprivation, nutrition deficiency, and lack of interpersonal, one-to-one social contact. When attending conferences, I have linked-up with peers who are in my course, and those who are completing options courses are feeling the same pinch as myself. Despite repeated reminders from friends and family that I need to “get out and get some fresh air”, I am already 20 months into my program, and I hardly think that now is the time for a break. After tonight’s elluminate session, I am even more impressed to share a blip about the need to be surrounded by positive people who can motivate and encourage one another to participate in discussions and jibes when times allow for it. It isn’t so much rhetoric about focusing on the goal, and staying one’s course to get work done that helps me to keep moving forward, and to immerse myself in learning and utilizing new technology. It is the nuances I find in reading my classmates’ postings that reflect their positivism, and the fluidity they develop in using technology that encourages and inspires me to be both persistent and tenacious in mastering our weekly explorations and postings. There are so many inadvertently negative influences in the world that can act as distractions against trying to stay focused on fulfilling my obligations to my academic studies, and my career. I try to keep my blogposts directed to the lighter side of life, as I spend each night at my computer, living vicariously through digital user interface with the rest of our global community. I have been fortunate to have traveled far and wide, and I never realized how important those travels would become to me when I was to become restricted in how much I could experience in life beyond the walls of the office in my home during this time. If my optimism sometimes seems too great, I can say with surety that Dale Carnegie was right on the mark, when he wrote that we should be “hearty in our approbation, and lavish in our praise.”


So, to continue with lavishing praise when praise is due, I would to say how much I liked what Joanne said about how twitter changed her life, and how she uses twitter as an indispensable form of PD when and she follows inportant hashtags from users who update others with their own PD experiences. I also like how Joanne commented that she follows, and has followers that reflect her own interests, and how she belongs to a community. I am still trying to find my own voice, and a community of similar-minded bloggers, vloggers, podcasters, tweeters, and Fbookers. Since Web2 tools are still very new to me, I am still learning how to use each different tool to express my voice and my interests with different communities I participate in.

Tonight’s elluminate session was great, but after a long staff meeting, and an elluminate session, I will have to provide an Animoto update tomorrow!

Cheers!

Wednesday and Thursday

Funny, tonight as I am using MSOffice 2003 I am coming to realize that too many words in MSWord 2003 spellchecker fail our new technology. I’ve found words such as blog, vlog, MySpace, Facebook, blogspot, LinkedIn, Gmail, Animoto, Ning, Skype, YouTube, microblogging, and, even folksonomy get FAIL from Word 2003.

Ah, and then there is Animoto! Animoto is anything but a FAIL in my books. I really like Animoto, and the free account allows users to create a 30 short video from photos in the Animoto photo album. Animoto reminds me of Windows Movie Maker that comes as a stock item on pretty much any PC these days, but Animoto hosts the video that users create, and there is no stress about which site will provide viewers to check out my artefacts.

Of course, I am simplifying the Animoto process, and it actually took me about an hour to figure out what tools are available via the free service Animoto provides (the number of tools is seriously restricted for free users taking advantage of the freemium service), but it still takes time to figure out how to use Animotos libraries.

I am pleased with my progress in Animoto today.

Friday

Today was a great day to get familiar with Voicethread again. I chose to use Voicethread’s media files supported by the New York Public Library. I narrowed my topic of interest to images of Staten Island from the turn of the last century, and the result was a success…kinda. I was unable to resolve two issues with Voicethread this week: 1) I cannot figure out how to import music into my ‘thread, in order to use music as a backdrop for the photos, instead of using my voice for narrative; 2) I was completely blind to the proper button or procedure about how to make my ‘thread public, and I cannot figure out how to make my slideshow available to all viewers. I will try this again tomorrow. The assignment IS complete, but I would like to have it clearly more functional than it is in its present state.

Reflections on the process of learning about the tool

Learning about social media was an enjoyable process this week, I think in part because of my prior exposure to Voicethread a couple of weeks ago. Mostly, though, I enjoyed Animoto, and that made a huge difference for me. I was put off by pbworks last week, because I did get a sense of immediate gratification from seeing my works in final form immediately after setting up the necessary resources to make the creation happen. Followers and readers of blogs expect bloggers to maintain a level of daily interaction with their audiences. Stuart (2010, p.46) reminds us that, “In the Web 2.0 world, users have an expectation of a constant flow of new information. With everything automatically time stamped, it quickly becomes obvious when institutions are not fully partaking in the community.” A small amount of time devoted each day to exploring with a tool, and supplementation with academic research into the nature and changes of a tool make a world of difference with providing the how’s and why’s of a tool, but also permitting a user with incentive to add something new that they build upon, much like the eclectic nature of a quilt that is a collection of patches, or knowledge – all assembled into a connected, collective whole.

Discussion of the tool in terms of my own personal learning

My own personal learning, as I found out this week more than any other since beginning this course, is really connected to my own interest in a topic or theme, and directly proportionate to the level of satisfaction and gratification I get from using the tool or utility. I enjoyed using Animoto to create because of the simplicity it offers. I still have a lot of learning to do, and to create more projects using the tools I explored with this week. It is regrettable that Animoto offers only a 30-second short movie for free users, as it would be nice to have the option to create, say, up to five of each of the paid services before having one’s account limited to the 30 short, so a user could get a feel for how interactive and versatile the Animoto account really is (free users cannot access all of the features a paid account offers). Kniffel (2010, p.2) remarks that, “What’s happening is that the technology has become easier, so the technologically challenged can turn our attention to the content of our blogs instead of the novelty of publishing one.” Grensing-Pophal (2009, p.36) relates the experience of Patricia Fraser:

Personally, says Fraser, “I almost never turn to a company’s help desk or customer service department now because it’s faster to Google my question than find a number, sit on hold, and inevitably be asked 10 stupid questions before I get to ask my question.” She continues, pointing out that she feels that social media “is honest. Many times,” she says, “my problem is one that the company won’t admit, has ‘never heard of’ or just can’t answer properly. There are a lot of people out there willing to write down how they solved a problem or [who] have a workaround—including when they got a refund or replacement product.” Lastly, she says that the social media approach has a clear price advantage for customers: “It’s free. Too many companies won’t help you unless you are within a certain period of purchase or have paid support.” Social media is breaking down barriers by providing ways for individuals to communicate their experiences directly, in real-time with one another to provide a more accurate, more realistic model of customer-oriented business that is changing the way both beginners and experienced social media users are giving-back to society in ways unprecedented in previous generations.

Discussion of the tool in terms of teaching and learning

”For students in grades K–3,” writes Ramig (2009, p.9) “find ways to use online social networking tools with the entire class. Pair up with another school. Together as a class, post online messages that students in the other school respond to. For very young students, try a network such as VoiceThread, which uses recorded messages rather than typed ones. By second grade, you can move to blog or wiki sites that are text-based. Encourage parents to read what has been posted too. Have class discussions about social networking. Students even as young as kindergarten have heard of Facebook and Twitter, so seize this opportunity to talk about what these sites are and how they are similar to what you are doing in class. Discuss what is good to post online and what should only be shared with people the students know in person.” I am always looking for new ways to integrate new technology in my classroom that does not present me as the sole distributor of knowledge, but that allows students to participate in using the technology. Every classroom in our school has an interactive whiteboard, and using a computer in the kindergarten class is a collective effort of all students watching and learning together. IT is easier for students to use a SMARTBoard’s haptic features more successfully than the keys on a standard keyboard because of the still-developing fine motor skills of most students at that age.

I am very likely to incorporate Animoto into my class activities because the icons are large enough that my students could ‘press’ the buttons for everyone to see as a group learning activity.

-rob

References

Carnegie, D. (2010, January 4). Quote retrieved from http://dalecarnegie.com

Farkas, M. (2009). Governing social media: protecting your library’s brand online. American Libraries, December, 35.

Grensing, L. (2009). Social media helps out the help desk. EContent, November, 36-41.

LeFever, L. (Producer). (2007, August 6). Social Media in Plain English. Common Craft. Podcast retrieved from http://trailfire.com/joannedegroot/trailview/77918

Kniffel, L. (2010). Is technology catching up? American Libraries, March, 2.

Mercoux, E., and Loertscher, D. (2009). Keeping up with technology requires collaboration. Teacher Librarian, (37) 2, 6-7.

Ramig, R. (2009) Social media in the classroom – for kindergartners (!) through high schoolers. Multimedia & Internet@Schools, Nov/Dec, 8-10.

Stuart, D. (2009) Social media metrics. Online, Nov/Dec, 22-24.

Stuart, D. (2010) What are libraries doing on twitter? Online, Jan/Feb, 45-47.

Wayne, G. (2010) Are you wired? Leadership, (39) 3, 16-18.