Part 5 features a Skype call via iPhone (with CallBurner of course) with headteacher, @iangilmour. He kindly gave up some holiday time to speak to me about his use of Twitter.
Iain has some very interesting things to say about how his use of Twitter has changed over the years and about his developing attitude to digital identity. Iain has been a dedicated and prolific user of the National College’s private, professional online community but points out the differences between this ‘walled garden’ and interacting as a headteacher in an open social setting like Twitter.
Truly fascinating stuff. Do listen and leave a comment!
Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.ioSkype conversation with Iain Gilmour:
Look out for part 6 – I might come and ask you to take part. If you’d like to be interviewed, please add a comment below or contact me on Twitter – @kevinmulryne
Incredibly, we are now on to part 4 of this mini-series! Perhaps it will turn into a maxi-series. This time I am indebted to @janwebb21 who gave up part of her holiday to talk about Twitter use from the point-of-view of a practising primary teacher. Once again, CallBurner was marvellous.
As you will hear, she has some perceptive and persuasive points to make and manages to coin a number of useful phrases along the way including my favourite, in reference to business and organisational use of Twitter, ”There’s a balance to be struck between nuisance and information.”
We spoke about an article on the Reuters website you may have seen – Consumers say: “In tweets we trust” Have a read of this and then listen to what Jan as to say.
Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.ioSkype conversation with Jan Webb:
Look out for part 5 – I might come and ask you to take part. If you’d like to be interviewed, please add a comment below or contact me on Twitter – @kevinmulryne
Part 3 of this series features Judith Christian-Carter, JudithELS on Twitter. (Also, thanks are due to CallBurner, which coped brilliantly with my connection dropping out!).
Once again, I have not met Judith even though she lives very close to me. As part of my seemingly ever-willing PLN, Judith was keen to help (or so she said) and the resulting conversation is full of insights from a daily user of Twitter both for work and play.
Judith is company director of Effective Learning Solutions and is actively trying to persuade her business partner to embrace social media, as you will hear, so let’s hope this recording will help her in her quest!
Many thanks are due to Judith for agreeing to take part.
Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.ioSkype Conversation with Judith Christian-Carter:
Look out for part 4 – I might come and ask you to take part. If you’d like to be interviewed, please add a comment below or contact me on Twitter – @kevinmulryne
After the success of the audio recording I did with @chrisrat (thanks CallBurner!), it seems obvious that talking to as many people as possible about their prvate/personal use of Twitter and other social media is going to be really productive.
So here’s the next in a growing series – @susanbanister who works for Channel 4 Learning.
Her company is at the beginning of its journey into social media and Susan has some fascinating insights to share in Part 2:
Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.ioSkype Conversation with Susan Banister:
Look out for part 3 – I might come and ask you to take part. If you’d like to be interviewed, please add a comment below or contact me on Twitter – @kevinmulryne
Yesterday I listened to the latest episode of the fantastic Explicit Web podcast. If you are interested in web design, you really ought to subscribe – it’s hosted by 3 engaging designers who choose some very varied and interesting topics to discuss. (Warning – they occasionally swear when they are excited/annoyed.) One of this week’s topics was particularly relevant to something I have been thinking about recently and something I am researching for the National College – how companies and organisations use Twitter.
How do companies and organisations use Twitter?
The guy on the podcast (sorry I can’t remember his name) identifies two ways of using Twitter. Actually I think there are more than this and it’s impossible to categorise all use into definite categories but here’s basically what he was saying:
Twitter for updates – no human element, no direct interaction
Twitter for conversation – human contact and intentional, personal interaction
He likened type 1 to an RSS feed. In fact, he bemoaned the fact that he often receives the same information via RSS and Twitter so ends up unfollowing the offending Twitter account. Is this a problem? If you work for an organisation (any kind) or business, do you split up your Tweets into a ‘news’ Twitter feed and a ‘personal’ Twitter feed? Do you use your personal account for business tweets or do you/can you keep them separate? I think it’s more likely that there is a third way. I think personal tweets will always blur into work and vice-versa as this is the way humans interact and it’s the way I think Twitter encourages.
