This is our 10th year at the Jazz Fest. Amazing lineup - with the "club pass" you can see it all. Here's a visualizer of the Twitter feed following the hashtags #xrijf and #rocjazz.
For full screen version, click in lower left square. For a direct link to visualizer click here.
(Sorry - it won't show up on your iPhone)
I'm attending the April 30 TEDxPortland. I'll be curating the best of social media feed without the RTs, hype and chatter. I'm following the hashtag #XRD on Twitter, FaceBook, and Flickr. So don't forget to tag! Newest tweets will be at the top of the page - older below. Check back for updates. Go to AM Edition
I'm attending the April 30 TEDxPortland. I'll be curating the best of social media feed without the RTs, hype and chatter. I'm following the hashtag #XRD on Twitter, FaceBook, and Flickr. So don't forget to tag! Newest tweets will be at the top of the page - older below. Check back for updates. To see posts from the PM edition click here.
One of the goals of my blog is to research, curate and effectively share information with my audience. Conferences are a great aggregator of expertise and information that have inspired some of my most popular blog posts. Here's three strategies that I've used to crowdsource my research and harness the conference backchannel. All three tools employ hashtags - the popular practice where conference attendees include a common tag in their tweets. Typically conference organizers will designate an official hashtag - some combination of letters / numbers prefixed with a hash symbol "#."
Use Twitter Visualizers
There are many great Twitter visualizers that can be set up to automatically gather specific Twitter #hashtags. Two of my favorites are Wiffiti and Twitter StreamGraphs. Wiffiti displays entire tweets, while StreamGraphs graphs frequency of keywords within the tweets. Both are interesting visualizations of the conference backchannel. Each tool is free and can be embedded on your blog. And neither requires you to attend the conference.
Here's how I used these visualizers to cover the 2010 ASCD conference.
For some fun, I used StreamGraphs to blog "comparative coverage" of two conferences that were in session at the same time in this post, "Humanities Conference Smackdown! AHA vs MLA Twitter Visualizers."
Use Prezi
Prezi is a presentation tool that adds a dimension of space and scale to information. It can be displayed both as a stand alone presentation and embedded on a blog. Here's how I used Prezi at the ITSC 2011 conference in Portland Ore, where I had been invited to attend as a guest blogger. My onsite tools included my MacBook, iPhone and Flip Video.
During the conference I attended sessions to gather photos / video and tweeted my observations along the way. I also gathered content from other attendees by following the conference hashtag #ITSC11. The finished Prezis can include - tweets, images, video, YouTube video, PDF's, screenshots, text, hyperlinks and clipart.
Periodically I gathered all the content and created a Prezi. (BTW - I used the same Prezi technique to blog the San Antonio ASCD in 2010.)
Use Storify
Storify is a new platform that allows users to quickly tell a story using material from the social web. Recently I received an invitation to try out their beta and I've been putting it to use as conference blogging tool.
The Storify web-based interface divides your screen in two columns. On the left (screenshot - to the left) are a variety of social media feeds - Twitter, FaceBook, Flickr, YouTube, RSS feeds, Google searches, SlideShare as well as any URL you select. It also has built in search tools that allow you explore your sources using hashtags. My favorite feature is that the Twitter search allows you to exclude RTs. As you find your content, you drag it to the right side of your screen where you also have options to add text, delete or re-order content. When your Storify finished it can be embedded in your blog. To help you get the word out Storify sends out a Tweet to anyone you have quoted.
Here's how I used Storify to cover the recent 2011 ASCD conference in San Francisco. I received many positive comments from viewers who thought I gathered some of the best social media being posted from the conference. I saved them the time of wading through all the RTs, side comments, and promotional tweets. BTW - I did not attend the conference.
Stay tuned for may ongoing conference coverage - I'm sure there's a new tool being created that I'll get to take for a spin!
I'm following the ASCD conference in San Francisco via the social web. Here's the best of the feed from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and SlideShare. I follow the feed from #ASCD11 - so you don't get overloaded with RTs.
Image credit: flickr/wallyg
I'm following the ASCD conference in San Francisco via the social web. Here's the best of the feed from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and SlideShare. I curate the feed from #ASCD11 - so you don't get overloaded with RTs. Image credit ASCD
To celebrate the 75th Anniversary of The Advertising Research Foundation in New York, PeopleBrowser commissioned a brief cartoon history of social networking.
Great illustrations by Adam Long.
~ Enjoy ~
On March 2, President Obama signed a bill eliminating direct federal funding for the National Writing Project (NWP), the nation's leading effort to improve writing and learning in the digital age.
Contact members of Congress and President Obama and tell them why the National Writing Project needs more than praise - it needs funding!
Image credit: The Seven Valleys Writing Project at SUNY Cortland
Jobs - stop messing with my head. I've lived this long without an iPad. Why do I suddenly feel a growing obsession to get one?
Storify is a new platform that allows users to quickly tell a story using material from the social web. Yesterday I received an invitation to try out their beta.
Just as I began exploring it, my Twitter feed alerted me to the tragic events in Japan. Without much planning, I began using Storify to collect material about the earthquake / tsunami from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and other news feeds.
While I kept my narrative to just a few sentences, users can add additional comments to each element. My finished story appeared on the Storify site and I used the embed code to also post it on my blog.
As an advocate of document based instruction, I realized that Storify has great potential in the classroom. It's a easy tool for teachers and students to gather a variety of social media and web content. It would be especially useful way for students to critically evaluate web and social media content. As a historian I also think if it as a first, rough draft of history - a social document for future generations.
~ I regret that my first use of Storify was to document such a tragic event. My prayers go out to all those impacted by the earthquake and tsunami. I hope to be able to tell happier stories in the future.
Storify Overview from Storify on Vimeo.
I'm pleased to be invited as a guest blogger to the Instructional Technology Strategies Conference 2/20-22 in Portland, Oregon. To help live and virtual attendees follow the backchannel here's two Twitter visualizers based on the the conference hashtag #ITSC11.
Also - here's my Prezi intro to Portland.
Wiffiti Screen
(2/27/11 Note) Since this visualization is time sensitive, I have posted a short video screen shot.
Twitter StreamGraph
Flowing graph of the words most frequently used in the latest 1000 tweets marked with the hashtag #itsc11
View full screen
(2/27/11 Note) Since this visualization is time sensitive, I have posted a screen shot. For the next few weeks you can click on link to live versions.
I posted this Twitter StreamGraphs visualization that displays a flowing graph of the words most frequently used in the latest 1000 tweets marked with the hashtag #SOTU. (#SOTU is a Twitter code for Tweets about the State of the Union address.) It was a great way to follow the backchannel Twitter chatter during (and just after) Obama's speech.
Because the level of Tweets using the hastag #SOTU has dropped way off - here's screen shot of what it looked like when it was live. Click to enlarge.
But since there are still a few people tweeting with #SOTU, click here for full screen of the live graph.
Navigation tips: Click on a word to highlight and see included tweets below.
Scroll to right for the latest keywords. Scroll down to see the full Tweet.
If you see a large spike in one time period that hides the detail in all the other periods, click in the area to the left of the y-axis to change the vertical scale.
Hat tip to Twitter StreamGraphs - @JeffClark
A recent post by Mike Gwaltney "Keeping Kids off the Internet – What’s With the Draconian Filtering Policies?" posed some important questions "Is filtering necessary? If so, why filter so aggressively? Is there a way to filter effectively that both protects students and allows them to use the Web to its potential? Aren’t we doing students a disservice by blocking the full internet?"
Here's my response:
I grew up in a heavily curated information landscape. The news was limited to relatively few sources. I can even remember the days of the 15 minute evening national news cast. Schools were just another one of the information gatekeepers that ruled my life. But at the same time it was rather tough for me to get in trouble. (though at age 16, I did manage to read large portions of the newly banned "Fanny Hill" in the aisles of a progressive bookstore).
Today, students are awash in text without context. They are only a click away from reading that the "Holocaust was a hoax." Ironically many schools respond by filtering. Wouldn't it make more sense opening up the internet at school and providing thoughtful analysis and responsible use?
Filtering teaches hacking, not responsible use.
For more on this subject see my post "What Happens in Schools When Life Has become an Open-book Test?"
Image credit: Flickr/GIANTsqurl
Educator / catalyst exploring frontiers of teaching, jazz, yoga, Macs, film, great books, and garlic
SmartPhone - Dumb School
Through the talk, I kept thinking about a quote from my previous post - The Future of Schools - Three Design Scenarios
"With rare exceptions, schools currently treat the digital revolution as if it never happened. Computers, more often than not, still sit in dedicated rooms, accessible only with adult supervision.
... When students step out the door of the institution called school today, they step into a learning environment ... in which one is free to follow a line of inquiry wherever it takes one, without the direction and control of someone called a teacher... If you were a healthy, self-actualizing young person, in which of these environments would you choose to spend most of your time?
... The more accessible learning becomes through unmediated relationships and broad-based social networks, the less clear it is why schools, and the people who work in them, should have such a large claim on the lives of children and young adults..."
While I've seen some cutting edge schools / teachers that have effectively embraced mobile technology and social networking, too many educators see smartphones as a distraction from learning. Many schools block Facebook, Twitter and the rest of social web as if it was pornography.
So where's this put our students? For many it means that they must leave their smartphone at the classroom door and surrender themselves to an information culture controlled by the adults. What's the mobile context in schools? Not much, it's banned as subversive to learning.
Every day in school, students must "forget" about the information control and functionally their phone gives them to browse, research, monitor, network, shop and entertain. While they might view a photo just posted to Facebook from a friend's mobile as the catalyst to a conversation, their teacher considers it a distraction from learning.
Mostly technology in school offers an "illusion of modernity" - automating routine tasks like word processing, or watching a teacher having fun at the smartboard. If students do get online in school - it often involves viewing "filtered" web content with limited functionality. Of course students need lessons in "digital hygiene." But curating all their web content and interactions doesn't teach them responsible use, it just sequesters them behind a firewall. "Suspicion invites treachery" ~ Voltaire
When students do get on a school workstation (laptop or desktop) they quickly realize that it doesn't "know" them as well as their phone does. Their personal device carries a wealth of information that's important to them - contacts, photos, data, memories. To the school desktop, students are just a user on the network with a limited range of permissions. The biggest problem with the school computer is that it doesn't do "place" at all. That's a stark contrast to students' mobiles, which geo-browse via the growing number of locational apps and geo-tagged information stream.
Mobile context in schools? Not much.
Maybe it was a bit harsh to entitle the post "Smart Phones - Dumb Schools." But try doing without your smartphone tomorrow and see if that doesn't feel like a pretty dumb idea.
For thoughful insights on the mobile web watch this great Slideshare by Yiibu.