The Ed Techie

My personal work/leisure/learning environment

Following on from the previous post I was thinking about how I have accrued a set of technologies around me. This wasn't a deliberate policy - I didn't think "I need to construct a personal working environment. Here are the functions I need..." Rather I have come across them, experimented with some, rejected some and kept others. It was only when considering what tools I couldn't afford to lose that I realised I had 'constructed' something that might loosely be termed a working environment.

I've mapped it out in Compendium, and here is the image (click on it to open up in a new window):

I suspect my set of tools is smaller than a lot of people's. My criteria for inclusion were:

1. I use it regularly
2. It's outside of my formal work provision (no Outlook, Moodle, FirstClass, etc)
3. It is something I have input to, not just a resource e.g. Guardian online (YouTube and Flickr are a bit borderline here).

A few things to note about this:

1. The boundaries are blurred - it is simultaneously a work/leisure/learning environment
2. The accrual over time is a different approach from setting out with a feature specification, and is much more organic.
3. There is little integration between the services.
4. Most of the tools are very easy to use - apart from some knowledge base queries in Typepad and the instructions for creating a slidecast I don't think I've had to consult a manual or seek help for any of them.
5. Following on from 2) I didn't know I wanted some of these until I saw them. Take Slideshare for instance, I wasn't sitting there thinking 'I wish I could share my Powerpoint files easily', but when it came along I took to it instantly.
6. I can't really say why I've taken to some applications and not others. I could rationalise my choice, but ultimately it is a complex mix of personality, emotional response to the interface, perceived need, timing, motivation, etc. This does mean it is a personal collection.
7. There is too much Google in my life.

It would be good to find an easy means of sharing these, with clouds so we could see which tools are used regularly. I'm sure someone must have an idea for doing this (Cohere, the soon to be released web 2.0 extension to Compendium might be an idea).

What web 2.0 apps would you least like to lose?

This is sort of web 2.0 desert island discs (I know lots of people have done this before, e.g. here and here). Having heard stories of people having their Flickr or Facebook accounts pulled, I wondered what would be the service I would least like to lose? Here are my top three:

1. Blog - okay, it's not a single service as such and pre-dates the use of the term web 2.0, but it's my list, so I'm bundling it in. As I said in my post of why educators should blog, I see the blog as the base camp for your online world. Everything else spreads from this identity. For me it is the sine qua non of an online existence, and it's also the one I gain the most satisfaction from. If I lost this I would feel truly that my professional life (and personal to an extent) was the poorer for it. Blog - I heart you.
2. Twitter - yes, in at number 2, and the surprise hit over Facebook. I started back in September when I decided I really needed to give Twitter a decent run. And I'm converted. It makes me feel connected to a range of peers, in a non-intrusive way (unlike IM), it is great for finding resources, it offers access to a support network, and is also good fun. If the future is a hive mentality then Twitter is it's waggle dance. If I lost Twitter I'd miss out on feeling part of a broader ed tech community, hell I may even have to go to conferences.
3. Facebook - I still like Facebook, but as my previous post sets out, Twitter has removed some of the motivation to go into it. Facebook is slightly more friend and institution focused. At the OU we have started developing applications for Facebook, which I think will be a very good way for students to enhance their own learning experience (for instance they can find people on the same course, find a study buddy, recommend courses, and soon share their story, swap resources, etc). I'm sure something else will come along and replace FB eventually, but the questions it has raised about how you support learners in this space and take advantage of the community it offers them, without invading their space will be important ones for us to address in education for years to come. If I lost Facebook I'd lose access to some friends who I only have contact through this and I'd also lose a space where we can think about the future of education.

Honorable mention - Slideshare. I do like Slideshare, it's just neat at what it does. And recording bad slidecasts is my new favourite hobby.

And that's it - Flickr, Delicious, LinkedIn, 43Things, YouTube - I could live without them. I like them, but their loss wouldn't be as catastrophic for me as the above.

What are the three you would least like to lose? Remember to focus on what impact their loss would have, not just on why you like them.

Status wars revisited

Back in September I posted about the status wars between Twitter and Facebook. At the time you couldn't get Twitter to update your FB status. A couple of people had cracked it but been told by FB to remove their code. I argued that FB don't want Twitter to update the status because that is the key to stickability for them.

I was wrong in that Facebook does now allow Twitter to update status (I thought they wouldn't allow it). But I was right in that this is a problem for Facebook stickability.  At least that's my experience, and it's interesting to reflect on the subtle difference between your Facebook status and Twitter stream.

I tried going Facebook status to Twitter first, but that meant I wasn't really engaging in what I suppose I must call the Twitterverse. I think you don't post regularly enough when you do this, you don't read as many tweets, and you don't use conventions such as @ for sending replies to users. And I think other Twitterers (Twits? Have we standardised vocabulary yet?), pick up on this.

So I decided that I would go the other way, Twitter to Facebook. This works fine technically - each status update begins 'Martin is twittering:'. But again it's a bit unsatisfactory. A lot of things I Twitter I wouldn't usually put in my FB status. There is a subtle difference between the two. It's not absolute, think of it as a Venn diagram - there is an awful lot of overlap, but there are areas that are unique to each.

In this diagram (courtesy of the marvellous Gliffy), the Twitter circle is bigger, since you tend to update that more. There is an area of overlap, the type of standard status posts you might do 'In a conference call.' Then there is the Facebook only area - for me these tend to be a bit more pithy, aimed at the friends I know in FB and cover a longer period, e.g. 'Martin is working today and definitely not blogging, updating status or twittering.' And then there is the Twitter only area. This will contain the replies e.g. '@mweller - stop twittering and get on with work', the more frequent updates, e.g. 'on a train, stuck in a tunnel' and also those aimed at knowledge sharing 'good post on twitter status here'.

For me then the Twitter only area is larger, so if I have to make a choice between losing one of the two (because I can't be bothered to maintain them both separately), then the FB-only area goes.

The knock-on effect of this is that I use Facebook less, since one of the draws of going in was to update my status, and not to reject 'Be a vampire' notifications. Of course there is nothing about the FB status that means I couldn't use it in the way I use Twitter (apart from the direct messages and replies), but it has to do with the very subtle communication affordances of the two. If I'm honest, I probably prefer the type of updates I do in Facebook, but I'm getting more value out of Twitter, so that's the winner.

If my experience is true for others then the shine is off Facebook.

Google reader recommendations

Like a lot of people I use Google reader, and find it very useful (I recently discovered the mobile version which is cool). They've added in a recommendations panel recently which lists some blogs they think you'll find interesting. As the Google blog says:

Interesting" here is determined by what other feeds you subscribe to, as well as your Web History data, all taken into account in an automated, anonymized fashion.

The recommendations I've had have been pretty good, so whatever data mining technique they're using it seems to be effective. It's a cool feature and another step along the complete Googlisation of my life. It's a good way for newbies to build up their list and for old hands to find some new blogs. Of course the only problem is that it doesn't read them for me.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone comes across this blog via a Google recommendation.

The future of gifts is personalisation

It was the 40th birthday of a friend of mine recently and I was rather at a loss as to what to get them. I've known him for 20 years so I started thinking about our time in the eighties when we did some travelling together and spent weekends partying. The (often rather poor) music we listened to at the time came back to me, so I started compiling a playlist in iTunes with the idea of burning a CD. It then occurred to me that I could probably give the playlist as a gift, and yes you can:

The gift went down well, and I had great fun compiling it. With the ease with which we can manipulate digital content, combined with cheap printing, having personalised gifts seems an easy step to make now. A few companies have started doing this, but I think it'll become the norm over the next few years. Simply getting someone a book or CD will seem something of an insult, because the most valuable thing you can give someone is the time and effort you put into a gift. Personalised board games, videos, books - that's what I want for Christmas (and maybe an iPhone too).