Reflecting on the week of September the 13th 2010

This week I had the chance to facilitate a Twitter meeting. This is the first time I have done this and I was struck by three things.

1. You can have some fabulous conversations and share resources even within the constraints of 140 characters.
2. As a facilitator, it can quickly become over-whelming...so you need more than one person to monitor the conversation if there are a lot of people talking.
3. It is very alienating for those who cannot join the conversation, especially if the hashtag does not work properly. So as a facilitator you have to manage that...any suggestions on how to do that?
   

Successes and failures
Kim joined the first Twitter meeting and took out of it the message that "to develop a successful online network you need to..."engage personally, contribute meaningfully, pay attention, listen a lot, be consistent". Matt enjoyed the meeting because it worked well from his mobile phone. Folke also enjoyed how easy Twitter was to use. But Katherine had a very different experience. She did not enjoy her experience of Twitter because for some reason she was unable to join the #FO2010 stream we were using. This had the effect of isolating her and making her feel "stupid". Please read her post and then think about what you can do as an online facilitator to make sure this does not happen to the people you work with. Gilly had an equally frustrating and isolating experience. Gilly questions whether she has the time or the reason to develop the technical competence to do more online than she is currently doing.

Twitter conversations
In the meantime, Malcolm has been following other Twitter conversations and got to hang out with occupational therapists the other day. I have to say that this is one of the things I love about Twitter...I get the chance to meet all sorts of people in different professions...that I normally would never interact with. Tara and Tania have been experimenting with a Twitter platform called Twitterific - if you want to know more about it, pop across to their blogs and ask them how they are getting on with it.

Networking
Some people were thinking about the value of social networking. Carole wrote a great summary about how she networks online and what tools she uses to do it. Jillian is finding that online networking has opened up all sorts of possibilities for her personal learning. Trish has reviewed the tools she has been using for networking and wonders how she can use them to "have students move their thinking, reading and writing skills from the surface to a deeper level and hopefully eventually thinking critically" - there is a nice conversation developing in the comments so do join in with your thoughts.

Technology
There have been a few different opinions about the technology we have been trying out. Sharon was not very impressed with DimDim but is willing to give it another go. I am just trying to get someone from DimDim to meet us and give us a thorough demonstration. Karen has been using her online connections to solve her problems with Elluminate. And finally, Tracey and I discovered this week that you can share your computer desktop in Skype...how cool is that :) Sarah