Posts tagged ‘twitter’
Is joining a PLN bad for morale?
Image via WikipediaA legal blogger I’m friends with, Dennis Kennedy, once stated that within 18 months of getting a blog, most people will have a new job (here’s the link to Dennis’s actual blog post on the topic).Sort of a spoof on Moore’s law, but I haven’t found it to be too far off. I landed a new job within a couple of years of starting Teach42, and owe the blog 100% of the credit for me being hired. I’ve seen many many fantastic educators transition to technology facilitator positions, or go off into consulting, and more often than not it’s because of the exposure they received from their blog. Bigger and better is a wonderful thing.
There’s a flip side to that though. I also know quite a few educators that are becoming more and more disillusioned with their jobs and are leaving teaching, and I can’t help but wonder how much of the blame falls on being part of an open network. Allow me to explain.
Example #1. Teacher A works in a decent district. It isn’t a dream job, but nor is it a slum. She does her job, does it well and loves working with the kids. Then she joins Classroom 2.0 and Twitter and other related sites. She reads about Chris Lehmann and SLA, she hears the great things that Eric Langhorst is doing with students in Missouri, she watches the amazing projects that Vicki Davis comes up with in Georgia… Then all of a sudden her school doesn’t look so great anymore. Why isn’t her school as tech savvy and ‘with it’ as those other schools? Why aren’t her administrators more on the cutting edge of educational theory, and why aren’t more teachers upset by this? Gradually, she starts to realize that her school is just behind and always will be. It’s not worth the time and effort to make the change there, perhaps she’d be better off trying to find a new school to teach at that ‘gets it’. A school where she can really spread her wings with like minded colleagues. Time to dust off the resume.
Example #2. Teacher B goes to a conference and attends a session about forming a personal learning network. He loves the idea and jumps on board. He registers for Twitter, joins a few communities, creates his own blog. He starts getting all these crazy ideas for doing things differently with his students. However, whenever he brings up an idea to his department head, he gets shot down. The DH is ok with blogging, but wants it to be behind the firewall. He doesn’t understand that you miss out on the ‘magic’ if you don’t do it publicly. Podcasts get shot down entirely, and most Web 2.0 sites that he wants to try are blocked. He requests that some get unblocked but nothing seems to happen for days. Gradually he gets more and more upset that most educators are able to take advantage of these great tools, but he isn’t. He is frustrated with his department head’s lack of support, the IT departments lack of response, and can’t figure out why more teachers won’t raise their voice at the injustice of it all. He feels like he has a better grasp of the needs of technology in education than anyone else he works with. Consequently, when a position opens up for a technology integration specialist, he starts giving it some serious thought…
Those are just two examples cobbled together from several conversations I’ve had with people over the past few months. In a nutshell, the newly-gone-natives are getting restless. Being close to people who are amazing examples of the best integration success stories in the world has led to mountain sized feelings of the grass being greener elsewhere. It’s leading to a great many people to think to themselves either, “Surely other schools are more ‘with it’ than mine” or even worse, “Education is doomed because nobody gets it besides we few.”
These are people that were happy, productive, and doing right by students before they got connected. Could it be that the PLN like the Matrix? Once you’re connected, you can never go back. And education is a lot dirtier than most people realized.
Image by dullhunk via FlickrTake the red pill if you want, but once you go down that rabbit hole, you may wind up depressed, disillusioned, and with a strong desire to seek greener pastures. Is being hyper-connected bad for morale?
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=f9a34bc9-82ea-455b-9150-f4a56f8fb20a)
Life on the cutting edge.
Image via WikipediaIt’s not unusual when somebody shares a tip with me and then appends it by saying, “But I’m sure you already knew about that already.” I always find that funny because the only reason that I am familiar with so many sites and applications, is because people have learned about them and taken the time to share them! Rarely would I ever be so bold as to say that I was the ‘first’ person to discover something. It’s like we’re playing a giant game telephone, but in a multi-linear fashion. If I have any secret, it’s that I do my best to stay connected with a rather large group of people that are much more cutting edge than many of them believe themselves to be.
And that’s the other piece that I find absolutely fascinating. It often seems that most people that come up to me and chat after a presentation start up the conversation by saying, “I’m so far behind everyone, but I’m trying to catch up.” I couldn’t disagree more. In my experience, most educators are still FAR ahead of the curve.
Here’s what I mean. Jump onto a public bus or train. How many people on there do you think have ever created a blog? Listening to a podcast? Have created a network on Twitter? Know how to use Google Docs? Have collaborated on a wiki? And so on… What percentage of teachers do you think are adept in all those things? I dare say the overall percentage would be fairly low.
That’s why I truly do believe that the people who are sharing ideas with me on Twitter or staying behind to chat after presentations are more than likely WAY ahead of the majority of educators. They just don’t seem to believe it themselves. Why is it so hard to believe?
So out of curiosity, I’d love to hear where you think you fall on the bell curve. Ahead, behind, right on the top of the wave? And why?
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=4616219e-10f6-4063-af36-a745cb61303e)
ShoutEm is to Twitter as Ning is to Facebook
We’ve all known it was coming, it was just a matter of time. Well, it has finally arrived and I’m thrilled to say that it was worth the wait. ShoutEm is a create-your-own-Twitter platform that works just as easily as Ning does. All you need to do is sign up with the current invite code of “doneright“, and within minutes you’ll be creating your own version of Twitter, as customized as you want it to be. It took me about 10 minutes to create Tweach42, the microblogging community for Teach42 readers!
They have several basic skins to choose from, but if they don’t quite suit you, you can upload images and tweak the settings through their UI. Or if you want more advanced features, just create your own darn CSS, they fully support it. I can only imagine what people are going to come up with down the road. Features include the ability to allow or disable public profiles, anonymous shouts (tweets), control replies, pownce like file sharing features, and even the ability to keep your network private or approve registrations on an individual basis.
What does this mean? It means that we finally have the ability to create our own Twitters for niche purposes. Youth Voices doesn’t need to hack WordPress anymore to simulate Twitter. Teachers can use it for any classroom project, with full privacy or publicity as needed. I plan to use it for backchannels and as an example for how microblogs work in a less crazy setting than Twitter itself. The possibilities are pretty endless.
Mind you, this isn’t a replacement for Edmodo, a site I’m still a fan of. Edmodo is what Twitter would have looked like if it had been designed by educators for classroom purposes. This is for people who like the Twitter format already and just want their own custom version of it.
If you want to play around with it, visit Tweach42 and send off a few shouts. And when you want to create your own, visit ShoutEm and use the invitation code “doneright“.
What kind of uses do you see Shoutem being used for??
Related articles by Zemanta
- Twitter breaks down barriers in the classroom
- TweetsGiving uses Twitter to fund a classroom in Africa on Thanksgiving
- Twitter In The Classroom
- Want a Twitter All for Yourself? Shout’Em Can Give You One – We Have Invites
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=b9d2c87a-d5b9-494a-8f18-33f455ee420d)
Day 29: Be a Rock Star
With only two days to go, I’ve been struggling with how to wrap this challenge up. The closer I get to the end, the more I realize how much more I’d like to share. Part of the dilemma for me is that this challenge has not really discussed the ‘spiritual’ side of blogging very much. I’ve tried very hard to make each of these challenges an actionable item, something concrete that you can actually DO to improve your blog, your blogging toolbox, and your skills as a blogger. However, there’s certainly more to blogging than widgets, feeds, links and comments. I was very thankful that the tips shared by other bloggers on Day 27 hit on so many other pieces that I thought ought to be covered. However, there’s just a few points that I wanted to share my own spin on.
For lack of a better way to describe it, today’s challenge is to go out there and be a rock star! What’s the difference between a rock star performing in their garage and a rock star performing in a stadium filled to capacity? Absolutely nothing… in their own mind. A true rock star puts as much effort into every rehearsal and every show, regardless of the size of the audience. They do so because they love performing and they want to share it with anyone and everyone.
Blogging is very similar to this. Every blog starts off with an audience of zero. We all started out talking to ourselves. We all tried to figure out how to draw an audience. We were all thrilled and amazed the first time we realized that a few people had visited our blog. We all get a smile on our face when we see that someone has taken the time to leave a comment, and a scowl if we learn that it was spam! But if you were to compare yesterday’s blog posts to many people’s very first blog posts, I don’t think you’d find them all that different.
So with that in mind, consider this carte blanche to go ahead and blog as though you already have an audience of thousands. Go ahead and promote the blog posts you’re proud of in full confidence that they’re worth sharing with anyone and everyone. Be bold enough to ask other people to participate in your surveys, polls and memes, regardless of whether you feel you’re ‘on the same level’ as them. Rankings be damned, we’re all educators who are linked together by our common desire to share and learn with each other.
Educators are not marketers, and I’ve found that more often than not most budding bloggers are almost embarrassed by their blogs. When they tell me about their blogs, they add to their descriptions phrases like, “well, it’s just a first effort” or “it doesn’t have any readers yet” or “I’m just playing around” or “I’m just trying to catch up to everyone else.” I can’t help but think to myself that anybody who is putting themselves out there and blogging should be nothing but proud of their own efforts! It takes time, commitment and confidence to stand up and share your thoughts with the world, and anybody who does so should be applauded.
With that in mind, I truly think you should take pride in your efforts. Don’t be shy about listing it as your URL on social sites. Add it to your signature in emails. Create yourself a set of Moo cards for when you meet other educators. Let your colleagues at school know about it, as well as your administrators (if you don’t feel comfortable sharing it with them, you might want to spend some time thinking about why). Let your parents, friends and relatives know about it so they can check it out too! Announce your blog posts in places like Twitter, Plurk and Ning. If you think somebody specific ought to see a post, email them a link. Share comments linking back to your blog on pertinent posts from other people.
I truly feel that even if you are the 1,000th person to chime in on a specific topic, your thoughts, ideas and opinions are just as valuable as the first person to chime in. Nobody else has your specific set of experience. The lenses through which you see things are completely unique to you and you may have a spin on things that are pertinent to people. Let’s face it, even if there’s only 2 people out there that would benefit from what you have to say, isn’t that worth the time spent sharing it??
Image by AdamNF via FlickrJust as a concrete example of this, think about this 30 Day Challenge in itself. It’s based on Darren Rowse’s 31 Days to Building a Better Blog challenge. I had the challenge flagged for about a year and a half as something that I was interested in. It took me nearly 18 months to finally be ready to act on it. His challenge has had hundreds of participants along with an immense amount of spin off challenges created from it. I could very easily have just taken his challenge and followed through it step by step and added my name to the list of participants, which was my original intention. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it would be more valuable to ME to create my own mashup of it, focusing on challenges that would be pertinent to educators. There are plenty of other places to get blogging advce or challenges to participate in, but I was hoping that there might be a few people who would get some benefit from joining me for this one. I’ve been stunned by the turnout.
Point being, this could have been a month long fiasco! Some of my other endeavors have been spectacular failures before. But you have to put yourself out there and give yourself a chance at success. It’s all a learning experience, regardless of the result.
When you get right down to it, the best way to be a successful blogger… is to be one. To put yourself out there, to be bold and promote yourself, to be confident in your worth and quite simply to be the Rock Star you truly are.
So today’s challenge is to give yourself the rock star treatment. The details are entirely up to you. Maybe you’ll direct message a few people on Twitter and ask them to take a look at a recent blog post of yours. Maybe you’ll add your blog to your email signature. Maybe you’ll give some friends a call and ask them to check out your blog. Maybe it’ll just be leaving a comment here and asking people to come visit it and leave a comment. Only you can know what kind of Rock Star you are, so do what feels right for you.
Then take the time to share what being a Rock Star means to you.
And tomorrow, we wrap the whole thing up! Anybody else getting misty eyed?
30d2bbb image by Jason Robertshaw is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=5cfd314c-4ff7-4566-ab52-f7f15b73de12)
Day 13: Declutter Your Sidebar Part 2
Well, you knew this was coming. Part one of the challenge was zooming in on the blogroll, assuming that your blogroll was even IN your sidebar of course. Part 2, today’s challenge, is to go through the rest of sidebar with a fine toothed comb and de-clutter it. This is one of the ideas based on ProBlogger’s tips that I knew was going to be included the moment I saw it. One thing to remember here is that de-cluttering does not necessarily mean removing things. It’s a matter of looking at each item you have there, considering whether it belongs in your sidebar or not, whether it is taking up more space than it deserves, whether it’s function is being duplicated elsewhere or could be consolidated, and whether there may be another way to achieve the same goal in a more efficient way.
If you’ve been following this challenge, then you’ve already added a few things to your sidebar. I think having a translate option is important and is going to stay. The Clustrmap is more of a vanity item than anything else, but it does an effective job of demonstrating the reach of your community geographically and I’m choosing to keep. Obviously, that’s a personal choice. I’m not going to preach that you should have a short sidebar or a long one, or what belongs there and what doesn’t. However, I do believe that what’s there should be deliberate and efficient in terms of space and form, especially considering how many options are out there.
For example, in my sidebar right now I have a Facebook badge, I have a ShowYourself badge, a Twitter widget, and a FriendFeed widget. The ShowYourself badge has a link to my Facebook profile and my FriendFeed widget displays my Twitter status updates, which seems kind of ridiculous now that I think about it. I’m going to eliminate them all. No, I’m not going to stop linking to those things and displaying my status, but I’m going to take advantage of a tool that Sue Waters (who is the spiritual co-author of this challenge!) recommended to me called Retaggr. It provides a nice clean badge that will give me almost all the functionality that those four items provided, but in one nice and neat package. It’ll have links to all my social sites, like the ShowYourself badge. It includes my headshot, company, and link to Facebook like the Facebook badge did. It will also display my most recent tweet, which is plenty. If people want to see my last 10 tweets, they can visit Twitter. The only thing I’m losing out on is that the FriendFeed badge displayed when I’ve uploaded photos or videos as well, which is pretty sporadic to be honest. Ideally, I’d love it if Retaggr would display my most recent post on Twitter OR Plurk, but that’s ok. I think the benefit far outweighs the few things it lacks.
There are a few widgets that I have that just don’t make the cut. I have a Now Reading plugin that shows what my ‘reading’ status is. However, it only works as well as my maintenance habits, which are poor when it comes to that. I never remember to update it so I have a choice: Change my habits, or just get rid of it. I don’t feel it’s that important, so it’s going bye-bye.
For the widgets that you’ll be keeping, bear in mind that there may be new versions of them available, or third party options that you could swap them out for. For example, check out all of these different Twitter widgets that are available. And that blog post is from a year ago! Many sites also offer you the opportunity to modify the color schemes for a widget, enabling you to try to blend it in a little closer to your chosen theme. You may find it worthwhile to give a few ‘keeper’ widgets a makeover as part of this challenge.
While we’re at it, let’s talk Archives. Typically there are only three ways somebody visiting your blog can find your posts once they’ve scrolled off the front page: 1) Search 2) Categories 3) Archives. I do think they’re important to keep around, but once you’ve been blogging for a few months, they start to take up a HUGE amount of space. However, that’s an easy one to do something about. Most blogging engines now have an option to shrink your archives down to a drop down list. So instead of it taking half the page, it’ll only take up a line or two. Unfortunately, that option is usually relatively hidden. In WordPress (and EduBlogs), you have to find the archive Widget and click Edit and the option will pop right up. In Blogger, it’s pretty similar. Go to Layout -> Page Elements and choose to edit the Blog Archive gadget. Lots of options there, including changing it to a drop down box. Very very easy thing to do in order to save a lot of real estate in your sidebar.
Finally, there are three things that I think you need to make sure are somewhat obvious in your sidebar: A search bar, a way to contact you and a way to subscribe to your blog. I never understand why some bloggers don’t have a search bar on their blog. It makes me leave their blog and jump through some Google hoops just to find information they’ve written that I know is there! As I mentioned above, there are precious few ways to find your content once it has scrolled off the front page. Don’t make it more difficult for your readers.
Contact information seems like a no-brainer, but I’m always stunned by how many blogs I visit don’t provide any way to make direct contact besides leaving a comment and hoping they see it. Some of you put your contact information in your About Me page. That’s fine, but if you did so, you should also have SOMETHING in your sidebar that clearly states, “This is where you can go to contact me” and then points to the About page. Once again, if somebody reads your blog and wants to communicate with you, you want it to be easy for them to do so.
Same thing goes for subscribing. Now, if you did the Feedburner challenge, then this should be a non-issue. But step back and verify that in your sidebar there is an obvious way for people to subscribe to your blog. Your RSS or Feedburner icon should not be so subtle that people can’t find it. I recently visited a very prominent blogger and was flabbergasted that there was no RSS link available. I had to view his source code in order to find out what his RSS feed. That’s inexcusable on a blog. So double, triple check to make sure that your RSS feed is represented in your sidebar and that it points to the right one if you signed up for Feedburner.
Just for the sake of an example, I’m going to leave my blog’s sidebar as-is for the rest of the day, and then will fix it up as I’ve outlined here tonight. Enjoy the mess for now, it’ll be a leaner, meaner sidebar soon 
I have to admit, the comments on these posts have been phenomenal. So don’t be shy here, did I miss anything? Is there anything you consider a ‘must-have’ for your sidebar, or that you think is a faux pas that bloggers often commit? Got a great widget that you think would add value or make people’s sidebar content more efficient? Share some of your favorites as well as the ones you hope to never see again! Also, if you’d like to get some feedback on your sidebar, share a link to your blog and I”m sure people would be willing to take a look.
Day 1: All about the “About” page
I struggled a bit to figure out exactly where to start this challenge off, when I realized that the first step is to define your blog as well as yourself. Which of course leads us to the “About” page. The about page often gets overlooked as people tend to focus most of their time and efforts on the actual blog posts and keeping up the frequency of them. However, when you get right down to it, the About page is absolutely critical to a blog. It provides visitors insight into who the author is, what they can expect to see on the blog, and what sort of lenses the information is being viewed through.
There are two key questions your about page should answer.
- Who is the author of this blog?
- What is this blog all about?
Who are you?
This seems like such a simple question, but it can get a little complicated. For example, how much info are you prepared to disclose? Transparency is a good thing, but some people prefer to keep their private life… well, private! Others are perfectly comfortable sharing every detail with their audience. This is where you draw that line. Your about page should at least share your name, whether it be real or a pseudonym, a brief bio, and at least one way to contact you. This should be the short version of your bio. If you’d like to post a full CV, that’s great. But don’t do it here. Think about making it one focused paragraph. Feel free to show off though! Include where you’ve presented, anywhere else you publish and so on…
Personally, I would suggest including a photo. It personalizes the blog and gives people a visual image to keep in mind when they’re reading. However, if you are uncomfortable posting a photo, then put up some logo or avatar that will serve as your headshot for the blog.
Just to clarify, while I’m pretty open with regards to my personal life, you don’t need to be. However, even if you do want to keep things private, you should still include information that defines who you are in the About page. For example, even if you don’t want to give away that you’re a first grade teacher in Springfield Illinois, you could still say something like “I teach primary students in the midwest”.
There’s nothing wrong with having fun with the page either. But the end result is that by the time they leave it, they should have an idea who you are as a person.
What’s your blog about?
This tends to be a more complicated question than many people think. What are you trying to accomplish with your blog? Who are you writing it for? What kinds of articles do you try to post about and how is your perspective different than everybody else’s? Those are the sorts of things you should include in the second half of your About page. For example, you could say that you write about current trends in education. That’s all well and good, but that’s what EVERYONE does! How is your perspective different? Do you focus on special education? Is your primary interest in integration strategies? Are you lower school, middle school or secondary school based? Do you have any experience? Are you writing about your own personal thoughts, or just sharing things you think other people might be interested in?
Think about some of these questions and write yourself a declaration of what your blog is all about. Don’t stress if you aren’t 100% satsified with it the first time around, thankfully you can go back and edit it later. This may be very challenging to do, but it can definitely help define yourself as a blogger and give you some focus.
That doesn’t mean you need to pigeonhole yourself though. Keep in mind that many people BELIEVE their focus to be something entirely different than what it actually IS. If you’ve been blogging a while, go back through your last 20 posts and see what topics you’ve covered. Maybe create a wordle and see what words come up most frequently. Figure out what defines your blog at its core, and let visitors know what that is. It gives them a reason to tune in and subscribe.
And the rest…
A couple of last pieces of this challenge. Make sure that your About page has a way to contact you. It may be a link to your “Contact me” page, your email address or your IM information, that’s up to you. But make sure that if they visit your About page, they have a way to communicate with you directly BESIDES the comment form.
Also, make sure your About page stands out. It should get a prominent link on your blog. Preferably in a top navigation bar, but if not, definitely towards the top of the sidebar. No matter what, it should always be above the fold.
Finally, bear in mind that the about page should be in a state of flux. Whenever something significant happens, your about page should be updated. It should never be allowed to get stale, as it’s one of the first places that visitors often go. And while your posts will always be scrolling off the front page, it’s the one constant that defines your blog.
Extra Credit
Steve Lawson, someone I met at Nokia’s OpenLabs, had a very creative idea, which was to create custom About pages for specific sites that people generally arrive from. He makes his primary landing page be his general About page, but then he also has a different custom About page for people who are arriving from Twitter. I love that idea, so you can really tailor it to your audience. So if you’re already very happy with your About page, then consider making a couple of others, and tailoring them to the social sites that you frequent. Then, instead of linking to http://mysite.com from Facebook, link people to http://mysite.com/about-facebook. You get the idea.
After you have finished updating your about page, leave a comment here with a link so people can check it out! Oh yeah, and also let your readers know so they can see the changes as well. And don’t forget to include the tag “30D2BBB”
For more information, visit ProBlogger’s tips for creating an About Page.
And now… I’m off to create my own (which has been missing for some time)!
UPDATE: Finished!
UPDATE 2: Had a question about how to create an about page on Blogger.com. While you can’t create static pages in Blogger, I did find a great post that walks you through a workaround for doing so.
Be a Better Blogger in just 30 Days
Recently I began to feel that my blogging has been slipping. By that, I mean that I haven’t been giving it much attention, and have been more prone to letting little things slide. For example, I know that the images in my Twitter badge aren’t showing up right and I haven’t done anything about it. Nor have I added a Plurk badge, which is way overdue. My Blogroll is stale, I’ve gotten lazy about linking to other sites, and so on… SO, it’s time to do a full makeover, top to bottom. With that in mind, I pulled up a link that I had bookmarked about a year ago that I had always intended to try out for myself. It was Pro-Blogger’s, 31 Days to Building a Better Blog. Some of the tips fit me, some of them didn’t. However, I always thought about spinning my own version of it, specifically for teacher/educator bloggers. After mentioning it on both Twitter and Plurk and getting some very positive responses, I decided to move forward with the idea.
I’ve sketched out 30 ideas for Being a Better Blogger. These are not tips like “Make it personal” or “Focus on quality”, these are ideas for doing things to improve your blog and address all the little details people generally forget about, ignore, or never knew to do in the first place. Every day I will post a new tip/challenge for you to try. Whether you’re a new blogger or tenured, I encourage you to join along with me and use the month of November to be a better blogger.
This is a personal challenge, so whether you follow one tip or all thirty is entirely up to you. I’ve created a badge (as seen above) to let people know that you’re participating in the challenge and will provide you a means to embed it in and link it up soon.
If you’d like to join in, leave a comment below so we can follow you back and help support you in your endeavors!
The challenge begins on Saturday November 1st!
What is innovation? How Andy Carvin Hacked the Debate
This week many educators enjoyed the shared experience of watching the debate with a Twitter overlay. Most did it the old fashioned way, with the TV on and a laptop handy. No laptop? No problem. If you receive the Current channel, then you could watch Hack the Debate , which featured the debate with Tweets from the general public floating across the screen. As much as I enjoy snark from the Twitterverse, I prefer to know personally the people who are sniping at the candidates. So I switched over to CNN which featured their Dial Test technology, enabling viewers to see how a randomly selected group of 16 male and 16 female registered voters from Ohio feel about what each candidate is saying, in real time. I have to admit that I did find that fascinating.
I do wonder what a technology like that costs. Thousands? Tens of thousands? Hundreds? Honestly, I have no idea. However, I did find it interesting. Unfortunately, the sample size is far too small to get any sort of accurate barometer. Wouldn’t it be interesting to be able to replicate the same experiment for free, with a much larger sample size?
Well, that’s just what Andy Carvin did earlier this week. While watching Twitter, I kept seeing people throw in the hash tag #dialtest along with a name, grade and comment. Things like this “#dialtest *Obama 7.0* Like what he said re: bailout”. I did a few Google searches and came across this post of Andy’s on the NPR blog.
Basically he thought to himself, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could create our own Dial Test using free and accessible tools?” And lo and behold, he did. Take one tablespoon Plodt, mix it up with half a cup of Twitter, and then mix thoroughly, adding basic programming logic as needed. People were able to send out Tweets in a very specific format, Plodt would pick them up, and aggregate them all together on one graph. End result?
![](<a href="http://plodt.com/tag/mccain">http://www.teach42.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/debate.png</a>‘><img src="http://www.teach42.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/debate.png" alt="" title="debate" width="425" height="179" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-994" /></p>
<p>Of course, you really need to <a href="http://plodt.com/tag/mccain">go to the actual page </a>to really see it in all its glory. When you hover over each of the points, it shows who posted it, what the grade was and any additional comments. The lower axis is time, allowing you to see how different people felt at different points in the debate. </p>
<p>Is it 100% scientific? Of course not. And obviously given the audience the results may have been just a touch skewed towards the blue. But that doesn’t change the fact that Andy figured out a way to recreate the same experience using free online tools that we all have access to. Throughout the course of the debate, 88 people posted 833 updates reflecting how they felt at that very moment. Just imagine scaling that to a larger, more diver group!</p>
<p>The point is, Twitter has been around. Plodt has been around. Perception Analyzers have been around. This isn’t a new invention. However, it is an incredibly innovative mashup of existing services to create a new way to experience live events. </p>
<p>Just picture doing this during a conference. Letting your audience provide feedback to you in real time if you so desire, or for you to come back to later. Think about how much more detail this would provide you than those post-workshop assessments! You could learn exactly at what point you start to lose people, or when everybody jumped on board. An incredibly powerful tool for reflecting upon your own experience as a presenter.</p>
<p>However, take it one step further. Every teacher is also a presenter. Would you like to know how effective your students think you are when you’re teaching? To learn what about a lesson really vibes with them, and at what points you’re losing them? Think about how much that could influence the way you design future lessons! </p>
<p>I can’t resist this, but it’s also one more way to use student cell phones to improve the learning process in the classroom. </p>
<p>I’m sure you can think of some uses of it for yourself as well. If so, I’d love to hear them. At the end of the day, it’s just one more tool to add to the ever growing workbench. And I can’t wait to pull this one out sometime soon! </p>
<p>Congrats <a href="http://www.andycarvin.com/">Andy</a>, your nutty little experiment is the most exciting thing I’ve seen all week.</p>
<div class="clear"></div>
</div>
<div class="meta">
<a href="http://www.teach42.com/2008/10/" class="date">
10/10/2008 </a>
<a href="http://www.teach42.com/2008/10/10/what-is-innovation-how-andy-carvin-hacked-the-debate/#comments" title="1 Comment" class="comments">1 Comment</a>
</div> </div>
<div id="post-948" class="post-948 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-second-life category-web-20 tag-avatar tag-dembo tag-plurk tag-second-life tag-teach42 tag-twitter post">
<div class="corner left top"></div>
<div class="corner left bottom"></div>
<div class="corner right top"></div>
<div class="corner right bottom"></div>
<span class="post-icon custom">
<a href="http://www.teach42.com/category/second-life/" rel="category" title="View all posts in Second Life">Post</a>
</span>
<h2 class="title"><a href="http://www.teach42.com/2008/08/29/me-and-my-avatar/" title="Permalink to Me and My Avatar" rel="bookmark">Me and My Avatar</a></h2> <div class="content">
<div class="bottomcontainerBox" style="border:1px solid #808080;background-color:#F0F4F9;">
<div style="float:left; width:85px;padding-right:10px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px;height:30px;">
<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.teach42.com%2F2008%2F08%2F29%2Fme-and-my-avatar%2F&layout=button_count&show_faces=false&width=85&action=like&font=verdana&colorscheme=light&height=21" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:85px; height:21px;"></iframe></div>
<div style="float:left; width:80px;padding-right:10px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px;height:30px;">
<g:plusone size="medium" href="http://www.teach42.com/2008/08/29/me-and-my-avatar/"></g:plusone>
</div>
<div style="float:left; width:95px;padding-right:10px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px;height:30px;">
<a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-url="http://www.teach42.com/2008/08/29/me-and-my-avatar/" data-text="Me and My Avatar" data-count="horizontal" data-via="teach42"></a>
</div><div style="float:left; width:105px;padding-right:10px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px;height:30px;"><a href="http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=http://www.teach42.com/2008/08/29/me-and-my-avatar/&media=http://www.teach42.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/dembo-avatar-300x187.jpg" class="pin-it-button" count-layout="horizontal"></a></div>
</div><div style="clear:both"></div><div style="padding-bottom:4px;"></div><p>What does your avatar say about you? Do you secretly desire to be taller, thinner, or younger? Do you see yourself as a canine, a cartoon character, or a jedi knight? Do you feel a desire to change your race or gender? It’s not always clear exactly what our avatars say about ourselves, but clearly they do mean something. After all, consider how much time we spend customizing physical characteristics for entirely virtual identities. Considering how quick and easy it is to change them, it’s surprising how few people actually do. Regardless of what they say about ourselves, our avatars are certainly a statement that we make to the world.</p>
<p>With that being said, I put out a Tweet and Plurk asking people to share photos of themselves with their avatars. Here’s what people shared.</p>
<p>Steve Dembo (and Demb Oh)<br />
<a href= "dembo-avatar")
Wendy Sigele
Liana Iaea-Honda
Jennifer Kraft
Do you have your own image of yourself with your avatar? Share a link!
Map of the EduPlurkiverse
Are you on it yet? If you’re using Plurk already, go add yourself by copying it to your saved maps and then saving a pushpin to it.
If you aren’t, isn’t it time you gave Plurk a try? Based on at least one study, it’s neck and neck (and NECC?) with Twitter. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a fan, but you can judge for yourself.