On Blogging and Social Media

I don’t think anyone can question that Twitter has become an Internet phenomenon. With an estimated 500 Millions active users each month. What remains at question is how effective is it as a tool both for sharing and retrieving information?


To get the best out of Twitter you really need to understand the anatomy of a Tweet.

Here’s a simple Tweet:

This is a break down of the anatomy:

The message

• The message part is quite short and this is the basic information you want to share “another fabulous web2.0 tool http://www.interestinglink.com/”

For me twitter is pretty limiting in terms of sharing any real depth of information, but it’s a great way to share sources of deeper information such as links to site, blog or articles.

The Hash tags: #elt #tefl #efl #Esl #edtech

• These are pretty vital. Although many people ‘follow’ hundreds or even tens of thousands of people, they very seldom follow the main stream of information from their followers because it just moves too quickly and nobody has that much time, so what tends to happen is people follow particular tags. By clicking on one of these tags in a tweet you can find what the twitter community as a whole has to say about this specific topic. Believe me that’s much simpler and more useful than trying to scan a constant stream of information as it feeds into your page.

Likewise, if you want to share information and you actually want people to see it including an accurate hash tag will dramatically increase your chances of it being picked out from the massive crowd of information.

With longer term Twitter users ‘following’ hundreds if not thousands of people, I would estimate that most Tweets that simply consist of 140 characters of ‘message’ are actually seen by very few, if any, people, so following the right people and getting your hash tags on is really a vital part of exploiting the network.

The sources

• The other key part of the tweet’s anatomy these “RT@zzTechstuff: RT @NikPeachey:”
  They show the sources of the information. This one shows that the original source of information was @NikPeachey and it was then shared again by @zzTechstuff
  

This is really useful information as clicking on these source names takes you to their profile pages and you can find out what other information they share and then you can decide if you want to follow them.

Getting the best out of Twitter really depends on knowing how best to you use it to get what you want.

How about you?

• What are your tips for getting the best out of your Twitter network?

Most of us who have blogs these days also participate in a range of other social networks and use a range of social networking tools. Tying these together can help you to promote all the things you do, build your profile and make visitors to one service aware of other services you provide and so help you to develop your network. I've been looking for a long time for a good tool for this job and finally I think I have found it with http://about.me .

Here's a quick look at my social profile page to see what it looks like. Be sure to have a look round a few others to get some design inspiration.


As you can see it is just a single page with a nice design, a bit of blurb about me and those all important links to all the things I do online. Below the surface though it also has a range of tools to help you track those services and it gives you information about how effective they are in building your network of contacts.

How to set up a social profile page

Let's start with the set up though. You'll need to go to: http://about.me register (for free) and you'll need a good high quality digital image of yourself that you can use as background (mine wasn't very good quality so I was forced to 'tile' it.

Once you are logged in you can start to design your background by choosing an image from your computer or selecting one from the site (best to have your own, but you can change it later).

Next you add your biography by simply typing your text into the fields. You then choose the colours and fonts for your text and the 'bio box' frame for the text. Be sure to use colours that make the text standout against the image background.


Lastly, the most important part is to start adding your services. This is simple to do. You just click on the service you want to add and then enter your username. If the service isn't there or you want to add a link to a website or another profile, just use the button that says 'Add URL or RSS' and you can add links to any web based site or service.


Once you have added your services, visitors to the page can have a peek at all the things you do. without leaving the page.

Building your network

This is all good stuff, but what is really great about this is the 'Dashboard' that gives you access to analytics information about your profile and some of the services you add there. You find out how many people click through to your profile and for how long. but you also get information about things like Twitter and find out which people retweet you the most or mention you etc. This can help to provide you with useful information about your network and find the best people to network with.
All in all I think http://about.me is a very useful free tool, whether you are building a network of friends colleagues or promoting your work.

How about you?

• What tools do you use to create synergy across your social networking activities?
• How do you reduce the amount of time you spend 'feeding' your networks?
• What are the best tools for promoting your network activities?

By all means leave a comment or a question.

Stumble Upon has been for some time one of my long term favorite browser plug in tools. It’s one of the best sources of interesting and sometimes offbeat new websites and can also be a great way to point people towards your own blog or website.

Just download the plug in to your browser tool bar, register for free and the discovering can begin.

So what’s so great about Stumble Upon?

• Stumble Upon shows you new things
  The first thing that I really enjoy about it is the first button at the beginning of the toolbar. Whenever I have a spare moment or I’m feeling bored, I just click on the button and Stumble Upon will take me to a random website I’ve probably never seen before.
  
• These websites aren’t completely picked at random though, the choice is based on the preferences / interests that each person puts in when they register, and based upon other sites you bookmark that you like.
  
  
• Stumble Upon learns what you like
  Each time you come to or Stumble Upon send you to a website you like you click on the ‘thumbs up’ button and it stored in your favourites for later viewing, if you don’t like the site click the thumbs down icon and Stumble Upon will know that you don’t like those types of sites.
• So the site learns about your preferences the longer you use it and gets better at finding things that you are likely to enjoy.
  
  
• Focus your stumbling
  You can also focus your stumbling so that if you are particularly in the mood to find something to do with a particular interest like photography or music, you just stumble through those categories, or you can search through all you interests at random. Just use the drop down menu to choose.
  
• Stumble Upon integrates with other aps
  If you are a regular user of other social networking and bookmarking applications. Stumble Upon can work with them to share what you find directly into Facebook or Twitter or help you email new find to a friend.
• 
• Stumble Upon is also a community
  When you find sites you like, you can also find out who added the site and who else likes the site and check out what other sites they have been adding. You can also start subscribing to their feed and becoming friends.
• When you click on site that you like, Stumble upon also checks it’s database to see that site is a new one and if it is a new entry you can add a short review to the site. This will raise your profile with the Stumble Upon community as you’ll be credited as the discoverer of the site and will also help other people to find the sites, so getting your own sites or blogs into the system can be very helpful in bringing traffic to your site.

I hope this quick introduction to Stumble Upon gives you some idea of what a great tool this is and how you can use it. By all means check out the sites that I have found and added at: http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/nikpeachey/ and if you like the things I’m bookmarking and think you have similar interests then let's become friends.

How about you?

• How do you find new sites?
• Do you rely on your community or are you looking for sites outside your profession?
• What other social bookmarking tools do you use?

This posting is to follow up an online presentation I gave on Friday 6th November 09 for AVEALMEC at the Social Networking - Thriving as a Community of Practice online conference.

The title of my presentation was 'from Information to Knowledge' and during the presentation I tried to look at a range of online tools and show how they could be used to help teachers tap into the vast amount of information being generated online, find useful sources, capture resources from those sources and use them to develop their teaching knowledge and their personal learning network (PLN)

To support the presentation I also created a 23 page booklet, with some 'How to' type instructions for setting up and using the tools, as well as some recommendations for useful communities for teachers to join and people to follow on twitter. You can read or download the booklet here.

From Information to Knowledge

I hope you find this useful and do feel free to share it.

How about you?

• How do you build your personal learning network?
• What tools to you use to capture information from the Internet?
• How do you cope with the vast flow of information being created?
• How do you keep up with the rate of change in the educational profession?

Please leave a comment.

There are lots of different widegts out there that you can plug into your blog, but my favourite by far has to be the Wibiya tool bar. I have it in all of my blogs now (except at present this one) and I am so impressed. Wibiya has enables me to get rid of half a dozen other quite baisc but necessary widgets that were cluttering up my side bar and slowing down my site and has combined their functinality and some other very useful functions into one really useful tool bar widget that you can see along the bottom of my blogs. (See Quick Shout)

Here's what the Wibiya widget can do:

• It has a built in search that can search through your blog archive or through Google. So that enabled me to get rid of the Blogger search bar from along the top of my blog and the one I had in my side bar.

• It is integrated with Google translation tools so now at the click of a buton my visitors can read my blog in any of ten different languages.

• Visitors to my site can now scroll throuugh an index of recent articles that have been published on the site or just click for a random posting. This is great for blogs that have loads of archive pages that seldom get visited and it enables me to get rid of another two widgets from my side bar.

• There is the RSS subscription widget and the 'Share' widget. Both of these were widgets in my sidebar, but now I have this which enables users to post my articles to any of the most popular bookmarking or social networking sites.

• It integrates with my Facebook profile, so my status updates are posted to a small Facebook community feature on the site and visitors to the site can join the community and leave messages there. This should enable my visitors to build connections both with me and each other through the site. This doesn't mean they become Facebook friends though, unless they take that extra step themselves , it just enables them to see what's going on with me and see what other Facebook members are visiting my site. There is an option to integrate this with a Facebook fan page, but I haven't tried that yet.

It integrates with Twitter (so there's another widget I can get rid of from my side bar) and very nicely too. It shows my Tweets and how to follow me in one column and in the other it shows any Tweets that have mentioned my blog. This is really handy because I can then track down the people on Twitter who have a similar interest to mine and follow them. It also enables vistors to the site to do the same thing, so the whole community benefits and moves a bit closer together. Fantastic.

• It has a humble message feature that you can set to display a small message every time someone comes to your blog. You can change these messages so it's a great way of flagging up events that you might be involved in or notifying visitors of future down time etc.

Well, I thought it couldn't get any better, but it does. When you go in to your Wibiya account and go to the dashboard, you also get stats showing you which features have been used and how many times, etc.

Is there a catch?

Well I can't find one. It's absolutely free and really easy to install and it starts working pretty much straight away. If there is a problem it is that you can only have one account per email address, so that means you can't run multiple blogs from the same account.

It's also still in beta at the time that I wrote this so it takes just under a week after registering to get your account. Apart from that I think this is a fantastic tool bar for a blog or website and one that can help you and your users build a lose network around your site and help visitors to access much more of the site. That's great.

How about you?

• What are your favourite blog or site widgets?
• How do you get vistors to look further than the first page on your blog?
• How do you build community around your site?

Please do leave a comment.

I've been thinking a lot this week about the kinds of tools I use to put information 'out there' and looking at a few new ones that I'm trying to build in to my 'broadcast network', so I thought I would share a few of these and see what other educators out there think and use.

I can put my broadcast network tools onto a kind of cline or scale based around the 'richness' of the content and this correlates pretty much to the amount of time they take up to manage.

Blogging
At the top of the scale there are my blogs. Here I provide the richest original content and these are still fueled by the belief that 'content is king'. If I really want people to read what I have to say, get over a clear message deliver valuable materials for learning etc, I have to get down to work and create it. I have four blogs, this ones and 3 others:

• Nik's Learning Technology blog - This one has tips and teaching suggestions as well as 'How to' type instructions and videos all focused on using technology in language teaching. It's the most time consuming, not only because the content is longer than the others and more detailed, but because I also try to provide 'How to' videos which I have to create and which I then upload to my YouTube channel.
• Nik's Daily English Activities - This blog is where I publish materials for EFL ESL students and it contains tasks for students as well as a little bit of 'How to' information to help them develop their digital literacies. It is still quite time consuming to up date as I have to devise meaningful learning activities as well as produce a range of screen shots (all of which I create using a free tool called Skitch)
• Nik's Quick Shout - This blog is where I publish a range of technology and EFL ESL related links to news articles or Web 2.0 type tools and software which can be used for educational purposes. I usually try to include a few suggestions and screen shots, but this one is still by far the quickest and easiest to update as the articles are much shorter, so when I'm not too busy I can get it updated every day.

Creating a news portal
Next down the scale is a tool that I've recently started using called Slinkset. Slinkset is a tool which allows you to create your own news type portal with different sections and links out to information around the web. Visitors can then vote this news information either up or down depending on how interesting they found it, a little like Digg.

• I've used Slinkset to create my own 'Technogogy' news portal where I store links to things that I'm reading, what videos I'm watching, My own work and conferences.

I could allow others to submit articles etc to it, either by opening up access to anyone or creating an editorial group, but at present I'm just working alone on it to get it started. It isn't to time consuming and there is a really handy browser button which I've added to my tool bar and I just click on it when I see something interesting and then complete the submit form and post it to the site. It's not beautiful, but it's free and does a good job, so ...

The down side of this is that I still have to direct people to it and that means building it in to the rest of my network.


Social Bookmarking
The great thing about social bookmarking is the 'social' bit, but to make it social you really have to find and join groups of bookmarkers. I use Diigo because it has a nice toolbar button that makes it really easy to submit links just by clicking and adding some tags an annotation and also because there are a lot of active groups of social bookmarkers there who share links on topics that I'm interested in (Learning technology, ELT, Web 2.0 etc) on a daily basis. This also makes this a handy source of information. You can check out my Diigo profile here to see what groups I'm a member of, what I'm bookmarking and who my friends are.


Twittering
Next down the line and one of easiest and quickest to manage is Twitter. It's just a matter adding a link and typing a really short comment and you can send out a message to your network (or followers if you prefer). Twitter is great because you can get such quick responses back and because it can connect your network to the networks of all the people following you (if they think what you have to say is news worthy). There are loads of tools to make Twitter easier to use and probably like many others I use Tweet deck. Twitter is also a great source of incoming information and communication too. You can check out my twitter profile here and also see who is following me and who I'm following if you want to start building your own network.


Visual bookmarking
Another tool that I use quite a lot is SimplyBox. This is a great tool for quickly grabbing information from sites by taking a quick kind of screen shot of it. You grab an image of a text quote, video or image. One I have grabbed these images, using a button from my browser toolbar I can then drag the images into various categorised 'boxes' which are image bookmarks which link back to the original source. If I want to I can annotate them too.

I can use this as a broadcast tool in a number of ways. I can 'share' a box so that I collaborate with others in compiling the information, or I can also publish a link to a box so that anyone else can see the collection of bookmarked images in it. Here's an example of a box of visual bookmarks I've collected on the theme of E-Safety.

I can also set the boxes up so that anything I add can be automatically broadcast to my Twitter network. I've found this to be less successful though as the links are all sent through Twitter with the same annotation, which isn't so user friendly in terms of describing the content or why they should read it.

A nice recent addition to the tool though has been an embed code which allows you to share the visual bookmarks as a slideshow that you can embed into your blog or website. Here's an example of a box I created for storing links to useful video related sites.



The best thing about SimplyBox is that it's so quick and easy to use, the links are stored and I can decide later whether I want to annotate, publish or delete them, so it doesn't disturb my workflow too much or become distracting.

Okay, so those are some of the tools that make up my broadcast network and help me to get information out.

How about you?

• What tools do you use?
• How do you build your network?
• Is content still king?

Do post a comment and let me know

Related links:

• Blogging as part of the community
• Building your Twitter network
• 10 free blogging tools for teachers

Twitter is an enormously popular tool at the moment and literally thousands of third party companies have starting developing applications that can enhance its capabilities, but which of these are good and which ones can help teachers to grow their network and use this tool in a more effective way? Karen Schweitzer from the About.com Guide to Business School has volunteered the guest posting on her top 25 Twitter applications. Thanks Karen.


Twitter is a great communication, teaching, and learning tool for teachers, but it can be made even better with Twitter applications. These web apps have built-in scripts that complement Twitter. There are currently hundreds of free apps available and more being created every day. Here are 25 Twitter applications that should be useful to teachers:

1. Group Tweet - Group Tweet is a popular app among teachers. It can be used to send Twitter messages instantly and privately to a specific group of friends, students, or parents.
2. Tweetparty - This group messaging service can help you put your friends in groups so that you can message them all at the same time. Tweetparty is great for classrooms and for teachers who want to keep parents up-to-date on student events.
3. TwitterFone - With TwitterFone, you can send messages to Twitter from your mobile phone. TwitterFone records your voice when you call a special local number and automatically updates your Twitter feed. Perfect for teachers who want to Tweet without typing or logging onto the Internet.
4. Twitter Mail - This Twitter application makes it easy to tweet via email. The app gives you a special email address. When you send a message to the email, it is automatically posted to your Twitter feed.
5. Tweet Later - Tweet Later is a productivity app for people who want to schedule tweets ahead of time. The app can also be used to track keywords, save and reuse drafts, shorten URLs, follow people automatically, and keep your inbox tidy.
6. Twitoria - If you follow a lot of different people, Twitoria can reduce your Twitter clutter. This application analyzes the people you follow and helps you weed out people who no longer tweet.
7. LoudTwitter - This Twitter app is great for teachers who want to keep non-Twitter parents up-to-date. The app sends tweets to your blog so that they can be viewed by everyone.
8. TweeTube - This Twitter application was created to make it easier for Twitter users to share YouTube videos with each other. TweeTube has since expanded to allow other types of file sharing, including pictures, web cam recordings, and website URLs.
9. TweetCube - TweetCube allows you to share files via twitter with other people who are online. File types that are supported include music, video, and images.
10. HootSuite - This suite of free Twitter applications is an all-in-one interface that allows you to manage multiple accounts, pre-schedule posts, and analyze your Twitter experience.
11. TwittEarth - With this Twitter application, you can watch tweets as they happen and see where people are posting from. TwittEarth is easy to use and fun to play with.
12. Twitter Answers - This Mosio application combines Mosio and Twitter to create a unique Q and A forum. Users post a question and receive an answer from a real person.
13. Twrivia - This daily trivia quiz on Twitter is a great way for teachers to introduce Twitter to students in the classroom. Students can answer the quiz question and learn more about each topic by clicking on a link that provides hints and background information.
14. Plinky - Plinky is a fun site that works with Twitter, Facebook, and blogs. A new challenge, question, or prompt is posted to Plinky each day. Visitors are encouraged to respond with text, photos, play lists, maps, and more.
15. Twitterbox - This Twitter client was created specifically for people who play Second Life. With Twitterbox, you can post and receive messages on Twitter while you are playing Second Life.
16. TwitterLit - TwitterLit is a fun site that delivers the first sentence of a book twice each day. It is a good way to discover new books and challenge people who love literature trivia.
17. Swotter - This book project is reading books to the world via Twitter. One line is read every fifteen minutes. Swotter is currently being used to read James Joyce's Ulysses.
18. Twitter Toolbar - This free toolbar makes Twitter instantly accessible through shortcuts and quicklinks.
19. Twhirl - Twhirl is a desktop client that works with Twitter and several other social sites. It can be used with Windows or Mac and has multiple features. Twhirl notifies you about new messages, shortens URLs, cross posts updates to other sites, spell checks, and much more.
20. Twitter Score - This Twitter application is a good way to see how you rate against other Twitter users. It analyzes your Twitter popularity and gives you a score between one and ten.
21. TwittieMe - Teachers who want to gather more followers fast can use TwittieMe to advertise their Twitter page for free. One free ad is allowed every 24 hours.
22. Mr. Tweet - Mr. Tweet is like a virtual assistant for people who use Twitter. This application helps you discover new followers and new people to follow. It also allows you to write recommendations for other people so that you can give your friends a boost.
23. Just Tweet It - This Twitter directory is a good place for teachers to find other educators with similar interests. Just Tweet It separates Twitter users into groups so that you can quickly locate and connect with like-minded people.
24. Educators on Twitter - This Google spreadsheet serves as a directory of teachers and educators who use Twitter. You can search for users by location or subject.
25. Twapps - Twapps is an enormous archive of Twitter applications. Categories include web apps, desktop apps, mobile apps, and Firefox plugins.

This guest post from Karen Schweitzer from the About.com Guide to Business School . Karen also writes about online colleges for OnlineColleges.net

How about you?

• What are your favourite Twitter apps?
• Which of the 25 above will you be checking out?
• Which do you think you could use with students?
  

Please leave your comments.

Related links:

• Building your Twitter network
• Microblogging for EFL with Plurk
• When Twitter isn't enough

If you really want your blog or site to be useful, appreciated and get regular visitors then it’s vital that you are part of the community your serve. That means more than just pushing your content to places where you think potential visitors might be, but it means actually engaging with, understanding and being part of those communities.

Whatever profession you are in, but particularly in education there are multiple online communities and networks already existing that you can get involved in. To find these can involve a bit of searching but some good places to begin are:

• Yahoo groups - They’ve been around a long time but there are still a great many very active yahoo groups and joining them often doesn’t cost you anything more than an email.
• Professional associations - Find the websites for any professional associations that are connected with your field and see if they have email discussion lists or social networks that you can join. This might involve becoming a member, but often it doesn’t.
• Social networks - There are a vast number of different social networking platforms like, Ning, SocialGo, Facebook etc. try to find the existing social networks connected to your field and join them.
• Quality sites with forums - There are quite a few sites like the Guardian online BBC| British Council Teaching English, Macmillan's OnestopEnglish that you can register on and get involved with.

Being part of the community
This can have huge benefits for you, in terms of what you can learn about the needs and wants of the community. You are much more likely to get feedback on what you are getting right or wrong and you are also likely to be better informed about what’s happening and what your community is interested in. It gives you access to a huge range of knowledge and information from all over the world.

Remember though that it is important not to SPAM your community. It is vital that you build a good reputation for yourself and your site, but reputation is easily damaged, so make sure that what you contribute has value and responds to the needs of your community. Don’t just push out links to your content, write proper responses to questions and establish your expertise. This can be much more convincing and in the long run do you more good than just sending out a link to one of your web pages. Always act with integrity within the community and try to ensure that your contribution is positive. This doesn’t mean you have to lie, it just means that if you don’t have something good to say then don’t say anything.

Which communities to join
Here are some things you can do before joining an online community to make sure that you aren't wasting your time.

• How many members does it have? - Communities with more members are more likely to be lively and active.

• How much activity doe it generate? - There's usually some way of checking when a community was last active. If it hasn't been active for over a month then it's likely that the community has died. If it is a very active community you might want to think about looking for digest options so you aren't bombarded with information.

• Who is in the community? - You can usually check the membership and see who is in the community in some way. Look for people of good reputation and also watch out for communities that have a lot people not connected with education in them.

• What's happening in the community? - See if you can check out some of the recent postings and see what kinds of things users are talking about and sharing. This will give you some idea of whether or not you fit with the aims of this group.

• What are the house rules? - See if you can find any house rules or code of conduct and then make sure you stay with it.

Here are some ELT and technology based communities that I would recommend joining.

Yahoo groups

• Webheads in Action - fantastic group of people with a huge knowledge base and great source of information
• Learning with computers - originally started in south America but now an international group of ELT educators dedicated to using technology in teaching

Organisations with email list based communities

• IATEFL special interest groups - IATEFL has a number of special interest groups that have online communities that you can join for free. IATEFL stands for the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language and their mission is to link, develop and support English Language Teaching professionals throughout the world.
• British Council ELTeCS - The news lists enable ELTeCS members to share information about opportunities, events, courses, projects, good practice, debates and ideas. There are six email based lists and you can choose the one for your particular part of the world (or join them all)
• Mirandanet - The MirandaNet Fellowship, founded in 1992, is an e-community of practice for international ICT policy makers, teachers, teacher educators, researchers and commercial developers who are passionate about digital technology in teaching and learning and about using technologies to promote cultural understanding and democratic participation

Ning based social networks

• Classroom20.com for educators in general who are interested in integrating technology into their teaching
• Bloggers in ELT, Freelance specifically for people who want to develop themselves as ELT bloggers
• The English Companion Ning for teachers of English language and literature but still useful for ELT
• Technology Integration in Education for teachers and educationalist, but with a focus on the use of technology.
• EFL Classroom 2.0 - specifically for EFL teachers interested in using technology
• Images4Education - mainly for EFL teachers who are interested in exploiting images in their teaching
• IATEFL Global Issues SIG - for EFL teachers with an interest in exploring global issues in class
• Mexico English Teacher's Alliance - started in Mexico but with a very international membership of EFL teachers

Quality websites with forums

• TeachingEnglish - The new version of this BBC | British Council site has forums and groups and enables commenting on most of their resources for registered users
• OnestopEnglish - This long established site has forums that registered users can get involved in

Being part of an online community is a great opportunity for you to develop professionally, learn more about your profession and have richer and more diverse insights to offer within your blog content. I hope you take advantage of these opportunities and bring something valuable to the communities you join.
How about you?

• Which online communities are you active in?
• Are communities useful or do they take up too much of your time?

Please leave a comment or question