E-verything!

I never cease to be amused at how parochial we all are at times despite our global connectedness. For example when I began doing Edublogs webinars about a year ago I gave the times (and stated that this was the case) in Western Australian (WA) local time when Tweeting about the sessions. However great chaos ensued for several reasons:

1. Western Australia was at the time undergoing an experiment in operating daylight saving time in summer (not having used this in previous years)

2. The rest of Australia and the rest of the world seemed unaware of this. Indeed why should they have been aware? After all in the great global scheme of things Western Australia equates to “the lesser fashionable end of the Western spiral arm” in galactic terms. Thanks to Douglas Adams in his “Hitch Hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy” for that wonderful phrase!

3. Dates of change to and from daylight saving are not the same globally

4.  For those countries (or in the case of Australia individual states) that do adopt daylight saving the Northern Hemisphere changes its clocks in one direction at around the same date as the Southern Hemisphere changes in the opposite direction.

Now I had just not thought through the implications of synchronous global attendance at anything. No excuse really, despite being an ex-European with a very strong awareness of global timezones as a result of regular Skype calls to the UK, I was thinking and acting parochially! Hopefully I now think and act more globally I have a World Clock gadget on my iGoogle page with a scatter of world times.

These are enough to give me some idea of the approximate time anywhere because they are distributed around the globe and anywhere else will be similar to one of them or between two of them.

The Edublogs Free Live Web Events page uses West Australian time in its calendar. However there is a World Clock Meeting planner link  to enable people convert for their own timezone. Alternatively there is also information on how to add the Edublogs calendar to your own Google calendar where the events will then show in your own local time.

After some thought I decided that as there was already a time standard in existence  that was what I should use in Tweets or other references outside the Edublogs calendar. So I began using Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)  although also including the abbreviation for Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). GMT still appears to be more widely known, and using UTC can give rise to further confusion about the date.

When I am Tweeting about sessions in the preceding few hours I usually clarify by adding a “countdown” for example “starts in 1 hr” however I find this can also be fraught with problems when some of my very busy PLN re-tweet in a hurry much closer to the session, don’t notice the time of the original Tweet and so don’t update the “countdown” time.

What started this whole reflection about timezones and our global vs parochial attitudes was an opinion from someone in my PLN that I should be using USA Eastern Time for the times of the Edublogs sessions. The reason given was that more people would then attend the sessions. My thought was “Hmm! Possibly more from that particular timezone. However in adopting and largely sticking to the use of GMT/UTC I am trying to be consistent and much more importantly from my point of view to think globally and use an internationally recognised timezone standard so that we are not seen to be favouring one timezone above others. From very early on we have had global participation in our sessions and my main objective is to keep the sessions global because in my opinion the exchange of knowledge and cross-pollination of ideas that happens when we have participants from around the world is the most exciting thing about our sessions. The recent change of session time to two hours earlier (2300 GMT) has meant increased European participation (midnight is a more realistic option for most people than 2am). In my opinion this improves the balance of participation and thus leads to the expression of a wider diversity of ideas and opinions.

Our Edublogs webinar this week was an action packed session. Guest presenter Shelly Terrell joined us to give a heads up on Tweetdeck with a session entitled “Tweetdeck: Get Organized on Twitter”  As often occurs in our webinars there was a very high level of interaction and participation throughout in the text chat.

As all good educators do Shelly began the session with questions and a poll to find out where we were coming from with respect to Twitter and Tweetdeck and also asked what we wanted to learn from the session.

Next came a great demo (using application share) running through most of the rest of the sesion and enabling Shelly to share and show us  some of the latest TweetDeck features including: creating columns, placing your followers into groups, adding new followers quickly, and following hashtag discussions!

This was fantastic – Elluminate application share coped quite well with the constant refreshing that happens in Tweetdeck. Our Tweets to Shelly during the session appeared to eveyone on Shelly’s TweetDeck through the application share. Shelly also showed us how to change Tweetdeck’s refresh rate to reduce the number of refreshes.

To round off Shelly gave us a quick test, just to make sure we had all been paying attention and to reinforce our learning

This was a great session much enjoyed by all! Thanks again to Shelly for giving us a great insight into the possibilites of Tweetdeck for managing our Twitter streams more effectively.

Elluminate has a whole range of features that many people are not really aware of. So I thought maybe a series of short posts on some of these features might be useful to others. Here goes with the first one!

Did you know?

If you are a moderator/facilitator you can see who makes which contributions to the whiteboard. This is very useful for a number of reasons – the importance of these will vary depending on your participants:

• You can ask contributors by name to expand or elaborate on their contribution
• Allows you to attribute contributions (useful if posting about a session later)
• Enables you to help and encourage those who are not participating
• You can evaluate individual contributions for assessment purposes
• Lets you target individual help to anyone who is using an inappropriate whiteboard tool for a purpose
• Allows monitoring and management of inappropriate participant use of whiteboard eg language

Some of the above are particularly useful for me in that our assessment is competency based and that I work with a number of school age students identified as Youth at Risk. So if a student is making innapropriate comments on the whiteboard or indulging in bullying I can protect others by removing the ability of that student to write on the whiteboard

To see who has written what:

1. Go to Tools

2. Mouse down to Whiteboard

3. Select Explore Objects

The object list appears in order with most recent change/edit last, in a new resizable, movable window that you can position anywhere on your screen including outside the Elluminate window.

Have fun! Surprise your participants when you know by magic “who did that?”

Twitter – a Clean Nest?

The Edublogs Online PD session last week (5/11/09) was about Twitter. I have over the last few months  noticed waves of spam, phishing and account hacking suffered by members of my PLN on Twitter. I also became aware (when @lasic tweeted and I think also blogged – although I can’t find it – about this a few months ago) that many people were unsure of what they could do to limit the impact when they or someone in their Twitter stream was attacked.

So looking at this seemed to be something that would be useful to quite a lot of people, including both those who have been Tweeting for some time and those fairly new to Twitter. It was a great session with a huge and very productive parallel channel in the text chat as well as the presentation and related interactions.

Managing Followers

The session started with a look at how we handle followers and a poll indicated that around 2/3 of the people present at the beginning checked for new followers frequently. They also had some criteria for deciding whether to: follow back, wait and see, or block/report spam. The remaining third did some checking but had less clear criteria and only occasionally blocked anyone.  Personally I am quite active in how I deal with new followers. I check very frequently and block quite often – I apply this to anyone I am unsure of or who starts the alarm bells ringing in my head. I make a conscious effort to keep my following list relatively small, so I don’t necessarily follow back everyone who follows me. For example I rarely follow anyone who does almost all retweets or who just tweets their blog posts or who does nothing but links. This is a very personal preference and I do it because I feel that the social interaction oils the wheels of the professional relationship and this is important to me personally.

We shared strategies for determining how we decide whether to follow someone. Some of those that several of us had in common were: checking out profile, avatar, follower/following ratio, recent tweets (number, topics, style, type), and their follower list. Other suggestions from chat and the whiteboard included: membership of other groups in common, “meeting” in another context (face to face or electonically, using Topify, using Twitter-gardening, using Tweetdeck’s new followers column and when they joined vs how many they follow.

There were a range of characteristics that started new follower alarm bells for some or all of us including: any provocative content, following excessive number vs followers, zero/minimal tweets, heavy marketing, self-styled experts/gurus, anything free/secret or guaranteed to …. Additional suggestions included automated tweets, social media specialists and real estate.

We also talked about reducing the number of irrelevant followers generated when we use a keyword in a Tweet. Many of these are automated searches that autofollow anyone who puts their search word in a Tweet. Some of the main ones include words like spam, sex, love, names of celebrities, major sports, cities, countries. While the last few may only attract one or two followers for example a tourist centre, the earlier ones can attract a flood of very inappropriate followers. A strategy that seems to work for me is replacing one or more letters in the word with a character such as “*” very much in the style that was used in print in an attempt to reduce the impact of possibly offensive words.

I find managing followers much easier than when I first joined Twitter a year ago. I use mainly my Twitter home page on the web and Tweetdeck for all my Twitter interaction and management, and in my opinion each new version has made dealing with new followers easier.

To illustrate this I shared my Twitter page and quickly blocked a new follower (not the one above) that I was doubtful about. There was some discussion about reporting spam, again I have a very personal opinion that reporting is useful because the more people that report a dubious Tweeter the more likely that Twitter will take some action.

My own feeling is that managing my Twitter stream actively helps to reduce both the risk to me and the risk that people who follow me will be attacked through me.

How to recognise an attack and what to do.

The discussion then moved on to recognising and dealing with an attack. Being aware of the style and type of messages sent by your followers is one way to recognise a probable attack. One of the most common attack types is to hijack someone’s account and then send DMs in their name that perpetuate the hijacking. I am immediately suspicious if I get an unexpected DM from someone in my stream that falls into one of these categories: doesn’t relate to a recent topic; points me to a link with just a general comment eg “Look at this” “Is this you?”

In my opinion it is important that we tell anyone from whom we get odd DMs. Once your account has been hacked it is quite possible for a DM to be sent in your name without your knowledge. If we simply block anyone who sends us an odd DM then the attackers win because they are curtailing our use of Twitter. It’s also helpful to others if you warn the rest of your followers when you get a suspicious Tweet. This is particularly helpful for people who are relatively new to Twitter.

If someone tells you that you have sent odd DMs then it is likely that your account has been compromised and that someone has access to it. This may have happened as a result of your participation in one of the games, toys or gadgets you have accessed from Twitter, many of these ask you for access to your account, not all of them are legitimate and even those that are may themselves be hacked. If you have this problem just changing your password is not enough as you have already given these third parties access to your account.

To check out who has access to your account you can go to your Twitter homepage and look at the Connections Tab in Settings. When I put this slide up during the session it gave rise to a sudden silence in the text chat causing me to worry that my sound had dropped out. Of course what had happened was that everyone had immediately gone to their Twitter page to check out access, and several were busy revoking access for suspicious applications.

If you don’t have a connections tab then you have not given anyone access to your account. Personally if I get a suspicious Tweet from someone I follow I tell them and also usually suggest they try the above.

A great source of information on what is currently happening in the way of problems on Twitter and of fixes for problems is to use the Help on your Twitter homepage as this takes you to Support. There you will find a range of information including FAQ and links to the Twitter blog. I have found this really useful when strange things have been happening on Twitter and it tends to be my first port of call when seeking solutions.

We had a great session and I think we all all learned a lot from one another – and that is the purpose of our sessions! Learning together, learning from one another is just the best professional development there is.

Just recently I have been thinking about how many people I follow and how I manage them. This was triggered by reaching the stage where Tweetdeck doesn’t load all my overnight tweets when I log on in the mornings so I have to look elsewhere. I have been in Twitter for about 6 months and have let my stream grow slowly (at this moment I follow 138 and am followed by 172). I like to be able to skim all tweets (from when I am offline) otherwise I risk missing interesting/useful/social “nuggets”. As my stream gets much bigger that becomes increasingly hard – particularly as a large proportion of my stream are on the other side of the world or the other side of the country (I am in Westen Australia). So I have just reached the point where there is about an hour of tweets that don’t fit in when I start Tweetdeck in the mornings – going to Web to pick them up is irritating as I then have to do about 10 “mores” to get back that far. However I have now tried using Twhirl for this and so far this is OK to catch those missing Tweets. One of the “nuggets” from my Twitter stream that made me think even more was Brad Stokes’ post ” You don’t need more Twitter followers” I found that I tweeted for very much the 6 reasons given.

I have no desire to develop mammoth follower or following lists. I gain a huge amount from Twitter but already am only able to interact professionally &/or socially (rather than just check the tweets) on a regular basis with about 25% of my stream. For me Twitter is very much a “Personal” professional network and I very much enjoy the opportunities for interaction on the social as well as the professional level. In my opinion following a huge list of people would be counter-productive to getting what I want from Twitter.

Almost all of those that I follow also follow me. I am quite “choosy” about following back when people follow me. I mainly follow educators but also some others with whom I have shared interests (often growing, cooking and eating food) or who just seem interesting when I check out their stream. Mostly I find new people to follow through @replies to existing members of my stream, following some of those who follow me, and through interactions at online forums etc. However I always look at the profile, avatar and Tweet stream before deciding whether to follow. I rarely choose to follow people with protected updates unless I have had contact with them through another context. Similarly I am also less willing to follow those who have no profile information and/or only a stock image for their avatar. Other negatives include: those who follow thousands and have few followers especially if they only have a minimal number of updates; those whose profile or Tweets tell me how to get something for free or how I can get a million Twitter followers;

I try to check out new followers as soon as possible after the email tellling me they are following but this doesn’t always happen. I am ruthless about those following me – corporates, marketers and self-styled social media gurus are almost always blocked. I don’t like being used as a conduit into members of my stream. I also block minors where I can pick them out. This is a personal preference – I am an adult educator who also works with many adolescents who have dropped out of school and I just feel that it is not appropriate for me to have this age group in my professional and social network. If I am unsure about a follower they get benefit of doubt and I don’t block, but my key strategy is to follow only those that have interests in common with me although of course there are occasional exceptions. I also block and report by DM to @spam any new followers that appear to me to be spam, scams, phishing etc.

An occasional issue that I have found arising with Elluminate is when one of the tools or modules doesn’t work properly. If this happens you may find that emptying the Java cache solves the problem. This is also a potential solution to any situation where Elluminate seems to be “behaving” oddly. I have found it to be a good initial troubleshooting activity when students encounter any problems as it is quick and easy to accomplish.

To empty the Java cache (from a windows operating system), close Elluminate if you are currently in a session.
i) Go to Control Panel (switch to classic view)
ii) Find Java and open the Java control Panel
iii) Select the General Tab
iv) Ensure that the space for temporary file storage is set to 1000 MB
v) In “Temporary Internet Files” select Settings
vi) In “Temporary Files Settings” click on Delete Files
vii) Ensure that:
Applications and Applets
Trace and Log Files
are both ticked
viii) Click OK

ix) Close down and then restart the computer – it may take some time to reload all the Java files when you restart and re-enter Elluminate.

One of my “go buttons” likely to generate a “rant” is having to wait for ever for images to open/download in websites and e-mail. This is partly because I live and work in an area that has bandwidth issues as a result of its regional location. I also work with regional and remote students some of whom are on dial up connections – this has made me even more mindful of the issues facing people with slow connections or older (slower) computers. This combined with the fact that I love to play with images and encourage students to do so gave rise to an idea for one of the Edublogs/ Elluminate Community Partnership Free Online PD sessions. An overview of the session can be found at the Edublogs Live Events Archive where  you will also find other links that might be of interest and also the link to the recording of the session.

The session was about making your images fit for purpose and I presented it jointly with Phil Hart. We both use free downloadable image editors for a lot of our image manipulation. Main reasons for this include:

• we can carry them around on a memory stick and install them on anything without licensing issues;
• we can recommend them to students who can then use them without incurring cost;
• we can install them on college computers for student use without any issues;

I mainly use PhotoFiltre this is because I find it easy to use, and have also found that students (even those who are not highly “computerate”) also find it quite easy.

This session was fun! I enjoyed making sure that the introductory part was interactive because the opportunity to make online sessions interactive is one of my favourite things about Elluminate. So I included polling, drag and drop and whiteboard activities in the intital discusssion about the need for editing images particularly with respect to size. Then we moved on to more interaction using Application Share to show some of the editing features of Photofiltre and giving participants an opportunity to take control of my desktop and try out some edits for themselves. After that it was Phil Hart’s turn to take centre stage and show some ot the features of GIMP – a rather more advanced (but still free) editing application that allows the use of layers – while I took a rest (ha! ha!) and fielded the text chat. We wound up with some feedback on the session and opportunites for any questions not already dealt with in the text chat.

The text chat is another of the features that makes Elluminate a great tool – especially if two people are co-presenting because the one not actively presenting can watch and respond to this backchannel. Watch this space if you are interested in Elluminate (or virtual classrooms in general) as I often post about some of the activities and Elluminate tools I use to keep  sessions interactive for my students.

I use WordSearches (WordSleuths) in Elluminate (and also in a face-to-face context) in a whole variety of integrated activities. They are particularly useful to me as a literacy lecturer but can also be really useful in any subject that uses specialised vocabulary.

Until recently I created my WordSearches the hard way – using a table filled with random letters and just replacing the letters with the words I wanted each time. However a couple of months ago I found this great online WordSearch maker.

Occasionally I use a WordSearch in its most simple form – just a word square with a list of words to find and highlight using the higlighter tool. Used this way it is a good warm-up or whiteboard tools familiarisation activity. In conjunction with “Explore Objects” on the “Whiteboard” menu under “Tools” I find it useful to get an idea of student participation levels.

Usually when I use a WordSearch either face-to-face or in Elluminate I extend it by asking students to find the meanings of words and then to put those meanings into their own words. In Elluminate this involves asking each student or pair/group to look up one of the words online and to feedback to the rest of the group. There are several different options I use for feeding back: a) audio using the microphone; b) use breakout rooms, type on the whiteboard and then I put the whiteboards into the main room for sharing with the rest of the group; c) use the text chat area; d) create a Wordle of the word and its meaning in their own words and put the link on the whiteboard – we can then Webtour the Wordles or students can visit them individually. A good variation on the last is to create the Wordles without the word itself and then have the other students use Polling to guess which word is being defined in each Wordle.

Setting up a basic WordSearch in Elluminate is very straightforward, especially if you use a WordSearch maker for the hard bit ie making the puzzle.

I usually try to be economical in my resource development and create resources that I can easily convert to alternative formats. As a result my WordSearches are usually pasted into worksheets using my own standard Word worksheet template. This is so that I can use the WordSearches in face-to-face classes as well as easily insert them into Powerpoint (ppt) for uploading into Elluminate. If the WordSearch was created as a table then its just a case of copy and paste the table into ppt, otherwise use Text to Table conversion from the Tables menu in Word. I still use Word for printables because of ease of formatting over html. This is one for use in a literacy context (I am generating a whole set of these using a vocabulary list) – it makes a good whiteboard activity for the start of a class when peolpe are arriving and setting up audio etc.

This is how I put the activity into Elluminate.

1) Putting this activity into Elluminate is easier than putting in Drag and Drop because it is all “background” ie there is nothing that the students need to move.

2) I usually set up these activities as individual ppts because this makes it easier to just insert the activity into any presentation or Elluminate session without having to edit out other material.

3) Copy and paste the WordSearch into your ppt and add the wordlist (usually also copy and paste as saves having to align the words)

4) Duplicate the ppt slide (Insert duplicate slide)

5) At this stage you have a choice you can either complete the second slide with lines/highlighting through the answers or you can wait until you have uploaded and add the answers on the whiteboard. If you take the second option remember that you need to save the two slides in wbd format for using later.

5) Save and close ppt

6) You can then upload the ppt into Elluminate as and when required. Alternatively, if you haven’t completed your answer slide, upload into Elluminate, use the highlighter to highlight answers and save as a wbd

7) It is easy to insert pre-prepared whiteboards or short ppts at any point in an uploaded presentation – just create a new whiteboard (tool next to the upload presentation one) and then replace it with your pre-prepared material.

You are ready to go – have fun!

Oh dear – I was about to write only my fourth blog post and I’ve already hit writer’s block (that was block not blog!). Perhaps it should be/is called blogger’s block? My problem is I can’t really see why I’m blogging. I am not generally a written reflector as reflection usually happens in my head. If I am looking for ideas/help/advice I usually search the Internet, ask/email specific people and/or (since joining Twitter) send out a Tweet. I also can’t quite see why anyone else would be interested in what I might write. Much of my work involves writing in one form or another – teaching and learning resources, funding applications, project reports etc. All of these have very specific audiences and objectives so I am not much given to writing without a defined purpose. I also find I want to include absolutely everything relevant and to get it perfect (in my dreams!) so I’m not very good at just “running something off” quickly.

Can I de-block?

I do occasionally write long, rambling (and illustrated with pics) emails about activities on our block to my best mate in the UK. This happens much less often than it used to as we now usually chat on Skype about once a week. So I thought if I wrote a bit of a “ramble” for my blog it might help me get over the blogger’s block.

A bit of a ramble through my current activities

I have got rather used to being on holiday – for those of you anywhere other than Australia, schools and TAFE here have their long summer break over Xmas and the New Year. This means (in my particular college) that unless you have a good reason for being on campus you have to take leave from just before Xmas to the end of January. However being “on holiday” doesn’t mean doing nothing work related. I am currently (and rather intermittently) trying to get my head around Flash – more of that in a later post, learning more about PLNs, slowly extending my Twitter network (tweeting regularly). Sue Waters and myself also re-started our Free Online PD sessions for the year and the next one is on Friday 23^rd Jan, 09:00 Western Australian time through Elluminate. The link is: https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/launch/meeting.jnlp?sid=675&password=M.200F5C3B0FE18DAB974B678B2EF277

If you are thinking of joining us and are not familiar with Elluminate you will find it useful to go to their support site and this will step you through configuring your system

Online PD on Friday 16th Jan 2009

At last Friday’s Online PD session we heard about the Poweful Learning Practice model for professional development from Robin Ellis and Chris Harbeck. There was a lively discussion about the merits (and otherwise) and some implications of using Facebook with students – particularly school age ones. We finished off with a discussion about using time limited challenges as a learning facilitation tool.

Now for something completely different – the other part of my life!

As well as all these unofficial work related activities we have lots of things happening on the block. This time of year tends to be a peak time for lots of fruit and veg to be ready all at once, since well before Xmas we have been eating zucchini, summer squash, bush beans, carrots, runner beans, strawberries and raspberries. We fought a continuing battle with small brown birds (SBBs) (weebills and silvereyes) – they get through the most amazingly small holes in the bird netting – to eat some of our cherries before they did. We still have zucchini and carrots and the next row of beans are starting to flower. We have also been harvesting sweetcorn

(some of these will be frozen) and are picking tomatoes, cucumbers and okra as well as lettuce and radish. Plums are being picked.

Peaches and grapes ripening, melons and pumpkins growing larger every day. All of this largesse means much processing – drying, making jam and some freezing. The ultimate aim is some veg fresh from the garden available all year round and surplus preserved one way or another for use when there is not much fresh.

As well as all the garden stuff (including sewing up holes in bird netting) we are preparing our outdoor area (courtyard and under verandahs) for paving. It will be sooooo good not to have the outdoor area and pool in a building site after over 6 years of sand and gravel underfoot between house and pool, wobbly chairs and unlevel table and barbecue for sitting out – I can’t wait!! However this means 2-3 hours each morning – when it is cooler than our current 38-40 deg C daytime maxima – leveling and moving sand.

Luckily there was plenty of excess on the house pad, and we just need to take it down to the bottom of the brickwork – we are having poured limestone and hope this will be lower maintenance than pavers.

The end!

At last I have finished – this is a very messy piece of writing that lacks both a real theme and much coherence – but at least it got me past the non-writing stage!

Hmm! Wonder if I could get hooked on this blogging thing? I’m not much of a written reflector – these things usually happen in my head (often when driving to/from work) and not on the computer/piece of paper. So I thought maybe I would write about using virtual classrooms – as my role involves me in using vc as a lecturer and also in teaching and facilitating colleagues in using vc. However I have so much to say about these that it seems like a good move to write a series of posts. So – for those of you old enough to remember TinTin and Snowy you can look forward to the next thrilling instalment of Jo’s adventures with virtual classrooms at regular (sort of!) intervals!

Anyway – just a bit about the VC I mostly use. This is Elluminate – it’s the one I use because here in Western Australia the Dept of Training makes it available for TAFE and as we are effectively paying for it, it makes sense to use it.

However for me there are also other reasons why I like Elluminate:

1) You can go in to a support linkand subsequently a configuration room and set up your system and also see what your screen will look like when you are logged in to a session (I just – today – tried to do the same with Adobe Connect and couldn’t find similar. It also told me I only had modem speed – I’m on broadband – but didn’t tell me whether that meant I couldn’t join a session)

2) I have accessed Elluminate help/support several times taking a ticket after accessing the self-help portal – mainly for student issues as every student has a different system configuration, and may have any connection (eg broadband, dialup, satellite, internal network). Elluminate support have always been extremely helpful and very professional – also they often can supply an answer overnight due to time zone differences

3) I am personally comfortable with the way it works – in common with all applications/tools there are things which irritate me but on the whole I am happy with far more than I am unhappy with.

Next post about Elluminate will look at some of the tools and the ways of using them that seem to work for me!!