Iain Gilmour

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!

Music: Kevin MacLeod Can’t use this flash audio player? Here’s a link directly to the mp3 –  Iain Gilmour on Twitter

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

Jan Webb

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.

Music: Kevin MacLeod Can’t use this flash audio player? Here’s a link to download the mp3 - Jan Webb on Twitter

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

Judith Christian-Carter

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.

Music: Kevin MacLeod Can’t use this flash audio player? Here’s a link to download the mp3 - Judith Christian-Carter on Twitter

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

Susan Banister

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:

Music: Kevin MacLeod Can’t use this flash audio player? Here’s a link to download the mp3 - Susan Banister  on Twitter

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

Do you put all your tweets in one basket?

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:

1. Twitter for updates – no human element, no direct interaction
2. 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.

How should you behave in a Tweeted world?

Is it necessary to be genuine in all you tweet? Should you be yourself in your personal Twitter account? Should you avoid selling your company or organisation’s wares? It looks like a difficult balancing act.

Step forward the expert – Chris Ratcliffe!

Chris Ratcliffe

Someone I have followed on Twitter for ages who seems to manage this blurred identity effortlessly is @chrisrat. So I was delighted that he agreed to let me pick his brains and record the output via Skype and the excellent CallBurner. Here’s his Prezi on the subject of e-marketing and our subsequent conversation:

Music: Kevin MacLeod Can’t use this flash audio player? Here’s a link to download the mp3 – Chris Ratcliffe on Twitter Photo credit: framer2009

Dr Kathy Seddon – online learning guru and famous Welsh person (@kathyseddon) recently asked me to tell her everything I know about Twitter.

She called it a ‘brain dump’.

It took some time, as you can imagine.

Later on she described me as a ‘digital gardener’. This is not an expression I had heard before but it struck a bit of a chord so I thought I’d share my thinking and a few questions.

If you have heard this term before, do let me know as I’d like to credit the originator. UPDATE: see the comments below!

GARDENER? CURATOR? IMMIGRANT? RESIDENT?

The debate around the usefulness of terms like ‘digital natives’ and ‘digital immigrants’ has raged for years, as I’m sure you know. Like all labels, these can useful as starting points for debate but don’t stand up to proper analysis. There’s always a risk they will be used as shortcuts to avoid discussing or analysing the real issues.

• “They will be fine with this technology – they’re all digital natives.”
• “We can’t ask them to do that – they are digital immigrants and won’t be able to cope.”

Recently, I have also heard the term ‘curator’ a lot and, once again, it is used with the assumption that all the audience understand what it means – it is used as shorthand. I have to say it seems a bit dry to me.

BETT 2010

At the BETT show in January I took part in a discussion with (amongst others) @daveowhite about digital identity and he introduced me to the concepts of ‘digital residents’ and ‘digital vistors’. As I work in e-learning for adults at the moment this made a lot of sense.

I would classify myself most definitely as a ‘digital resident’ – hence this blog! I work to maintain and develop my online persona via blogging, twitter, posterous, delicious, Moblog, Moby Picture etc. In fact, after seeing @tombarrett ‘s home page I have set up http://everything.mulryne.com to collect a lot of these together. This sounds quite like a gardener, tending plants and creating the right conditions for growth. I tend the places on the web where I reside – I want them to grow and portray me in a positive way- to be a fruitful expression of my (online) personality.

ADULT LEARNERS

However, many (but crucially not all) of the adults I work with are very much ‘digital visitors’ – they like the web, they are not necessarily scared of it but they want to get on, get what they want and then get off again – leaving no trace that they have been there. It reminds me of the way I used the internet way back in the early 90s when I paid by the minute.

So how can we facilitate learning for groups of adults who might be ‘digital residents’ or ‘digital visitors’? What difference does it make? How far down the age range does it go?

Certainly, I’d say that every time I hear someone use one of these terms from now on, I’m going to question exactly what they mean and whether or not it’s just an excuse to avoid the hard work of analysing our audience properly.

Why don’t you do the same?

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