Tag: Social Media

Social Media: Do you take photo at events?

I recently read an interesting article on Social Media use from the Guardian (You can read the post here)

It got me thinking about why I post as I am conscious that I am one of those people who occasionally posts photos taken from conference events as referred to in the article.

I think I have 2 main reasons for posting photos from a conference.   The first of these is to promote a discussion of a point raised at the event.    Conference events are largely one way, with the sage on the stage presenting their theories, opinions and thoughts.   As such there isn’t really an opportunity to spark up a discussion beyond the usually short Q&A at the end of each session.  By posting a photo to twitter you can seek to start a discussion or see how much agreement, via liking, exists as to the point.   The act of posting also pushes the point being raised to a wider audience, beyond that of the venue in which the event is being held.

The second reason I have for posting a picture from an event is as a record for myself.   Once I have posted it, it is logged within my twitter account for review later.   As such I can relocate points at a later stage where I need to plus I can also reflect on my previous thoughts and opinions based on what I posted as opposed to what I remember.    I am conscious after reading various books including Talebs, The Black Swan, of the potential falseness of memory, so being able to look back on my social media posts to ensure my recollections are correct is very helpful.

Some of the best events I have been to have involved the presenter making use of social media as a back channel to support a greater degree of two way communication however that is not for everyone.

I will continue posting comments and photos from events.   I will try to be as discreet as possible in doing so in order to avoid impacting on the experience of others attending such events however if you are sat behind or beside me and I am detracting from your experience please feel free to let me know.

 

Social Media, parents and our kids

In the last week I have read two separate articles with regards the use of Facebook by parents and the impact on their children.   The first of the two posts was posted on BBC News entitled “Should children ban their children from Social Media?” while the second was in The Guardian entitled “I was so embarrassed I cried: do parents share too much online?”.   I found the discussion an interesting one and hence this post.

My use of social media for sharing personal info is very limited.  I post very occasionally on Facebook, generally using it to send birthday wishes, etc. as opposed to posting my own content.    I use twitter heavily however for professional as opposed to personal purposes although I will admit that the line between these blurs; Posting about my morning walk to work I was considering the teacher wellbeing side of professional life however these posts could easily by categorised as providing some insight into my personal life.    I have almost never posted pictures of my two children as they have grown up so hopefully they will never have cause to be embarrassed by something that I have posted in relation to them.    That said they may still be embarrassed by something I have posted at some point in time, albeit not directly related to them but embarrassing in that it was posted by their dad.

So how can we mitigate against this potential embarrassment.   The easy however impractical solution is to stop posting.   If I don’t post anything then there isn’t anything to be embarrassed about.   Following this thought process, I can think of a few occasions when I have made a comment or said something embarrassing; does that mean I should stop talking?   I am sure there have been a few occasions where my kids wish I would.   The other problem with this approach to reducing embarrassment is simply that Facebook and social media are now a part of our lives.    Updating friends and relatives as to events and milestones is now more common than the old approach of taking a photo, having it developed and then putting it in a photo album or in a shoebox in the cupboard.   Social media makes the sharing easy and convenient to do and in doing so it adds to the richness of life.   Having moved back to the UK after a number of years in the UAE I am still able to keep up with the events and friends despite them being an eight hour flight away.   They still form a part of my life.

This is where things start to become a little more complex as the postings are about my life and therefore in the case of most parents include milestones and events with our children.    Milestones such as starting secondary school, walking for the first time, holidays with family and many other memories are eternalised through Facebook for others to see both when they happen but also many years into the unpredictable future.    It is in this future space that our children will start to develop their own online identify and social media profile.    This profile, through our posting as parents, will however have already started being created long before our children are able to make informed decisions with regards who they are within the digital space we now live in.    We as parents will have started to shape our children’s digital identify.    I acknowledge as parents we shape our children and therefore shaping their digital identify may seem nothing more than an extension of the parental role however I would suggest digital identify is a little different.   We shape our children’s attitude, outlook, beliefs, etc. however these can change over time.    In our digital footprint there is an element of permanence as once something is posted to the internet it may be impossible to remove.   Also there is the possibility for outsiders such as potential employers to view postings without access to the context within which the posting was made.

I would suggest one of the issues here is that when Facebook first became a hit there was little long term consideration for the implications of posting our lives online.    Young adults flocked to use Facebook without any guidance as to the later implications.   Consider the advice with regards not posting about your home address and holiday plans as a burglar could use this in targeting your empty home; this guidance didn’t make an appearance until after Facebook postings had been allegedly associated with a few robberies and the implications had been identified.    Fast forward a few years and those young users now have families with children complete with a digital record of their children’s early years thanks to Facebook.   Today I would say the implications of posting online are a little bit better known due to very public hacking incidents, cyber crime and celebrity scandals relating to social media use or the use of email in the case of certain presidential candidate.    We are a little more aware than we were.    We still have a long way to go in my opinion plus this is little use to the children of parents who posted every detail of their growing up, warts and all.

So what can we do?   Privacy settings are one part of the action we can take in making sure that only those people we really want to have access to our personal postings, and the postings relating to our children, have access.    Restraint is another action.   Rather than posting we need to consider how the posting might impact our children in future and if in doubt avoid posting.    We also need to open up communication with our children so they know what has and is being shared about them.    If you shared a potentially embarrassing photo of your child when they were younger do they know the photo exists and also which social media sites it has been shared on?    For truly embarrassing photos we can delete them although as with everything on the internet we must do so with the knowledge that everything posted cannot being removed as easily.    Any user could have copied a posting or taken a screenshot ready to repost so once it is out there it may not be possible to undo.    Another thing we need to do, which is something already well underway, is making sure our children are fully aware of the implications of social media.    When they go on to have their own children it would be reassuring to know that we have learned for any mistaken we may have made, and that they will not readily repeat them.

Social media is here to stay, a part of modern life, so the key is ensuring all using it understand the implications both on ourselves but also on the others who might be the subject of our posts including our children, or even just innocent bystanders to a poorly framed photo.    And on that note I will stick to limited personal use of social media, for now at least.

Thoughts on social media

I have seen lots of excellent infographics with regards why teachers should make use of social media such as twitter.   This has got me thinking about the question of what we use social media for.

We use it to get access to new ideas, resources and perspectives.   This is the very much about access to and consumption of content.    Social media provides access to a wealth of individuals and the content which they are sharing via social media sites such as twitter, pinterest, personal blogs, etc.

We use social media to curate content of linked topic areas or subjects.   Using sites such as Storify and Paper.Li we can gather content together and re-share with others.    This is particularly useful where a twitter chat or other event has occurred and we want to create a record of the various comments which were made via social media as part of the chat or event.   This is the start of producing our own content, albeit this new content being nothing more than a collection of content produced by others.

We use social media to share our ideas.   This is very much about producing our own original content and sharing with others.

The above three activities were those that came first to my mind however I have recently been also considering a fourth area, being how we engage with others content, the content which we have read.   Through social media we can comment in shortened form via twitter, however we can also comment in a longer more detailed format via blogs, linking back to the blogs of others to which we are referring.

For me social media now occupies a key place in my work and in my ongoing professional learning.    The challenges in hand are very much about getting more of the teachers who currently consume content, to begin contributing content so that the content available becomes more representative of the teachers working in schools all over the world.    The other main challenge is encouraging those teachers who haven’t engaged with social media at all, who therefore are missing out on a wealth of ideas and resources.

I look forward sharing with you!

Using Twitter

I have been a user of twitter for almost 4 years now although initially I just started to test the waters, finding little use for twitter at the time.   Some months later a colleague got me back on twitter mainly due to the enthusiasm he displayed with regards the potential twitter had to help educators develop professionally.

I haven’t looked back since then with my involvement and use of twitter steadily increasing.   My new years resolutions for this year included the intention to build on a 2015 average of around 1.9 tweets per day.   My regular involvement in #sltchat, #mltchat plus involvement in #teacher5adaysketch, #29daysofwriting, #hacktheclassroom and #appsharelive sees me currently having posted around 370 times across Jan and Feb so far which amounts to over 7 tweets per day.   I will admit that Buffer is playing a keep part in this as it allows me to schedule my regular tweets.

The question is why I am finding twitter so useful?

My first answer to this lies in the list of events above.    Without twitter I would have never came across #appsharelive or #hacktheclassroom to name but two events.   The events are also not limited to online events.   I found out about the up and coming #tmbmth16 event in Bournemouth via Twitter.

A second answer would be access to resources and ideas.   Educators are regularly posting about apps or teaching and learning approaches which they have tried or are planning.    #appsharelive for example provided me a list of 5 or 6 new apps in each of its 3 sessions to date.

I also find twitter allows me to engage with other educators who may share similar or different viewpoints and beliefs with regards education.   As such this leads to questioning and discussion allowing for reflection.    Only the other day via #29daysofwriting a person who I would consider a colleague even although we have never me, questioned a sweeping statement I had made.    This made me question my views and the statement I had made, which in reality had been a little sweeping.    Next time I will try to be more careful.

My final benefit relates to the social aspect in that via twitter I have access to teachers and educational staff like myself who are engaged in trying to continually improve and to collaborate and share.    I consider them colleagues!   Events like #teacher5adaysketch serve to strengthen this bond, to provide support when I need it and encourage balance.

I continue to enjoy using twitter and look forward to continuing to share ideas and thoughts with you.

Reflections on 3 years of blogging

It’s been 3 years to the day since I started my blog and wrote my first posting.    Since then I have wrote a total of 75 postings.    I need to admit that 11 have been posted in Feb this year as part of #29daysofwriting.   So overall I have roughly been posting 1.7 articles every month.

A lot has changed for me over the period.    To take just one example, back in 2013 I was living and working in the UAE whereas now I am back in the UK.   Technology has changed.    We now live in a world of mobile devices with Google apps and office 365 facilitating increasing levels of communication and collaboration.  The world as a whole has changed.

I have at time found the process of blogging to be difficult in terms of finding the time, identifying appropriate topics and also motivating myself to undertake the actual creation of blog pieces.     That said it had been a worthwhile experience.    Looking back the blog provides me a window on my past thinking and on how my beliefs, ideas and thoughts have changed over the period.      The process of blogging has required me to think through my assumptions and question my beliefs.   It has required me to consider different viewpoints and perspectives.    It has also resulted in discussions with other educators from across the world who have shared both views consistent and inconsistent with my thinking.    This again had required me to re-evaluate and question my perspective and viewpoint.

I am glad I have put the effort into blogging and I intend to continue doing so going forward hopefully with increasing regularity.     I look forward to reading the blogs of others so if you aren’t blogging yet I would encourage you to start and of you do please let me know so I can have a read.    Looking forward to it!!!

Keep Sharing!!

 

 

 

Collating ideas

I am a hoarder; I love to collect things however once I have them I have difficulty throwing them away as I am convinced they might come in useful at some later stage.     In terms of physical items this tends to be technology items such as old Atom processor based netbooks, every type of cabling you can think of plus some old 10Mbit network switches and routers.  I also suspect I have some old floppy discs and floppy drives lying around.

This need to collect extends beyond just physical items to teaching ideas and resources.   I feel the need to collect the good ones which I find.   For some time now I have been using twitter and reading a variety of educational blogs and websites, and as a result have found lots and lots of new ideas and resources.   As I have found more and more new ideas and resources there has been an increasing need to find an efficient way to store plus to collate these ideas and resources.   This has weighed on my mind.

Having just purchased a new tablet in the form of a Galaxy Tab S I appear to have found my solution in using both Pinterest and also EverNote.   I am not new to either of these two apps however up until recently my used has been rather limited.   Ever since getting the Tab I have found myself throwing the ideas I find straight into Pinterest and EverNote.    I have found myself using both Apps much more than I used to and have also started to learn more about effectively using the Apps to collate the materials which I have found.   This has made me consider the importance of collation in this world of ever increasing amounts of information.    We often want to quickly and easily find specific ideas or resources which we have previously encountered.   The internet will allow us to find similar items easily however as the amount of material on the internet increases it also becomes a little more difficult to find the specific items which we wish to find among the masses of other similar info.    Using something like Pinterest or EverNote allows me to collate together all the resources and ideas I find, and to tag them such that they are easy for me to find whenever I need them.

This got me thinking about another issue; lets consider that I do use Pinterest or EverNote to gather all the ideas and resources I like over a period of time.   This would be an excellent resource for me as an educator as the ideas would all be ideas I identify with and often would be things that I tried shortly after finding them.    My ability to recall ideas is limited in a way that computers are not, hence  you could consider the use of the internet and Pinterest or EverNote as an attempt to augment my mental capacities.   I would be able to recall ideas and resources I had found years ago without difficulty.    I may come to rely on this enhanced recollection ability.   The issue is that this excellent stored resource of my ideas and resources would exist only in the cloud.    As such the service provider such as Pinterest or EverNote could at any time change the service they offer or could even close the service altogether.   At this point this repository of my individual ideas may be lost.

So the question is how much should we rely on cloud based services in our lives and in our work?    I also wonder about young students who have been avid users of social media solutions; Have they considered that the total story of their life as presented in FaceBook or other sites, which they are proud of, may suddenly and without much warning cease to exist?     Or do students just not hoard the way I do as they can find anything they need via the internet, and could the increasing using of SnapChat be an indication as to this being the case?

I think there could be some good discussion points in the above, particularly where the issues are discussed with students.