“Over the last 10 years, I’ve been invited to give many talks and run workshops about how to use social media in various different contexts across higher education, from developing a professional presence to using it to amplify events. In various job roles, I’ve been the go-to person to introduce it to a department or to offer advice for the new person wanting to try out for the first time. I always feel that I’m the person who can offer a gateway to getting started. However, in doing so, I have also experienced criticism about my own use and social media presence, sparking debate about the value and authenticity of social media – and what is considered ‘correct’. This twitter talk will explore the tensions in personal and professional identity as an academic and reality of enabling social media usage amongst others.
Using my research-practice experience of a digital media practitioner, which focused on developing critical media skills and increased digital participation in schools and community development settings, I discuss how my media education background has translated into (the attempts at) introducing social media as a pedagogical tool within FE and HE institutional environments.
Taking an auto-ethnographic approach, I will discuss the challenges of influencing and engaging with cultural change as an ‘outsider’ coming ‘within’ an institution (Holloway, 2009), which wants the benefits of an active and authentic social media presence and digital literate student and staff population, but struggle with political, cultural and social the change required in the workplace to enable authentic debate and dialogue. Drawing on this scenario, I will discuss how the ubiquity and opportunity to produce and consume content through digital, mobile media in our daily lives (Gauntlett, 2011; Jenkins, Ford & Green, 2013; McGillivray, 2013) can conflict with the universities’ need to manage expectations in administering, utilising, delivering and teaching education technology in a centralised, propriety manner.
Referring to examples available on twitter of past projects, I wish to propose that the universality of media education & the continued reflexive practice and structure within education can be mutually inclusive and can aid the professional development of educators– regardless of the educator’s discipline, job title or academic/non-academic contract. That is, in the selection and development of an appropriate digital method and educational technology for the task, each educator within each discipline can establish what is required for their course, their students – and for themselves.”
Blogging my PhD on WordPress created new learning opportunities & expanded my professional digital identity. Now as a lecturer my blog includes an open learning space for students & other learners. I’ll share what I’ve learnt on my WordPress adventure! www.linkinglearning.com.au
Experimenting with different online learning opportunities which take advantage of the affordances of openly networked online social technologies underpins my approach to learning and teaching. Jus…
I am a lecturer and researcher at Queensland University of Technology, teaching Connected Learning, Inquiry Learning and Teacher Librarianship. My recently completed thesis investigates how teachers experience professional learning through personal learning networks. My research presents a conceptual model of of learning as a connected professional, which makes a significant contribution to theory and practice in the emerging field of professional networks and learning, enabled through the affordances of social technologies. While I have based my research on school teachers’ professional learning, I believe that my research has implications for professional learning opportunities of individuals in many different fields. I am very interested in how we can break down the silos that exist between different professions, and would love to hear from others who wish to explore this further. I also hope that my research will build foundations for rethinking how we bring connected learning more authentically into our pedagogical practice.
I have previously worked as a librarian and teacher, and have been fortunate to have had many wonderful learning opportunities across a variety of roles, in a variety of contexts. When I’m not working, I love reading, playing with my Jack Russell puppy, Ruby and Whippet, Alice, and cooking. I’d love to travel more and see the world, and eat my way around many different countries and cultures!
Commentary on Tweetstorms
Twitter has a new UI that allows you to create multiple threaded tweets by clicking a + button.
Will you look at this?! Twitter has recreated the WordPress Gutenberg editor interface into their web product. Currently it only has a few blocks for text, photos, gifs, video, embeds, and polls, but it’s not completely horrible and it’s relatively fast and convenient.
The Gutenberg editor in WordPress:
Screen capture of the new Gutenberg interface
In fact it appears that they’ve pared the editor down substantially. A few more tweaks and it might be as clean as the Medium editor experience.
Want to add a video, just drop a youtube link:
Want to embed a blog post from somewhere else? Add the link in your tweet and get a spiffy Twitter Card (just like oEmbed!)
I can see people getting awfully tired of clicking that “plus” button interminably though. Maybe if the interface could algorithmically choose where to break text the same way it determines what tweets I’m going to see?
Now they just need an edit button and they’ve got a “real” blogging experience, but one that’s editable in tiny 280 character chunks. Who has the attention span for more content than this anyway?
I can already tell that newspapers and magazines are going to love this. Just imagine the ease of doing shareable pull quotes this way?!
I can see journalistic institutions rebuilding their entire platforms on Twitter already!
Old CMS -> Tumblr -> Medium -> Twitter!
What is your favorite editing experience?
The Tweetstorm-o-matic
WordPress’ Gutenberg
WordPress Classic Editor
Medium
Uh oh! I’m noticing that they’ve neglected to put a block in for a title area. Maybe we could just do a really short tweet up at the top of the thread instead? If only we could drag and drop tweets to reorder them? At least you can add new tweets into the middle of the stream.
Besides, who’s going to read anything but the headline tweet anyway. No one is ever going to read this far into a tweetstorm. Maybe a blog post where they at least know what they’re getting into, but never a 20+ card tweetstorm.
And would you look at that? They almost jumped ahead of Medium on inline annotations by allowing people to reply to very specific pieces of the text. I’m kind of disappointed that they don’t have the pretty green highlighter colors though.
An inline annotation on the text “Hey Ev, what about mentions?” in which Medium began to roll out their @mention functionality.
Now if only I could register a custom domain on their service and have control over the CSS, Twitter could be a first class open web CMS.
#ICanOnlyDream
*Sigh* I suppose until then I’ll just stick with my humble little website that allows me to own and control my own data on my own domain name and communicate with others using simple web standards.
WatchedLecture 9: The Gospel of Luke by Dale B. Martin from RLST 152: Introduction to the New Testament History and Literature
Luke and Acts, a two-volume work, are structured very carefully by the author to outline the ministry of Jesus and the spread of the Gospel to the gentiles. The Gospel of Luke emphasizes the themes of Jesus’ Jewish piety, his role as a rejected prophet, and the reversal of earthly status. The Gospel ends in Jerusalem, and the Acts of the Apostles begins there and then follows the spread of the Gospel, both conceptually and geographically, to Samaria and the gentiles. By closely analyzing the Gospel and Acts, we see that the author was not concerned with historicity or chronological order. Rather, he writes his “orderly account” to illustrate the rejection of the Gospel by the Jews and its consequent spread to the gentiles.
Directed by Kevin Bray. With Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys, Brandon J. Dirden, Costa Ronin. A secret brings Elizabeth and Paige together, while, in Moscow, Oleg's own secrets put him under KGB suspicion. A new twist in the Morozov operation creates an opportunity that changes everything.
Exciting! Apparently there’s a used bookstore hiding in Old Town Pasadena where the music shop used to be.
Only got to spend a few minutes there on my way from a meeting, but it looks like it could be an interesting experience.
Chris Aldrich mentioned it was his #indieweb anniversary today, which made me wonder when I first encountered indieweb. Turns out it was six years ago!
In his recent post criticising the Creative Commons Certificate, which I won’t comment on, Stephen Downes repeats a claim he has made before about the scalability of the connectivist approach, stating:
One of the major objectives of our original MOOCs was to enable MOOC participants to c...
It’s been a rough week to be a star, and a rough week to be someone who listens to what stars have to say. At least, that’s what social media tells me. Some of the most famous people making music today—Ariana Grande, Cardi B, and Justin Bieber (as well as Lizzo, a darling of critics and her fans but not quite of superstar status... yet?)—have shared their thoughts online regarding the state of media in 2019. None of it advocates for a free press, much less even contends with that notion. The gist is that journalism should be service journalism that primarily serves the powerful and their images.
gRegor Morrill (gregorlove.com)