Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

5 apps I can’t wait to download to my iPad

The wait is almost over! Tomorrow, April 3, is the official release date of Apple’s new iPad tablet computer. We’ve already covered the iPad a great deal here, and will continue to do so once ours arrives and we’ve begun putting it to use. As part of our coverage, we’ve shared some video demonstrations of magazines and books–but what about other software? Here are five neat looking apps you might want to download to your iPad sooner rather than later:

1. Apple’s iPad software

Apple has put a lot of effort into rethinking how software works on a device that uses a finger as its primary pointing device, as opposed to a mouse. I’m interested to try apps like Keynote and Pages, demonstrated in the iPad guided tours released by Apple this week. It looks like the apps were created with no consideration of how they’d work using old paradigms–important for a brand new device like the iPad, I think, and an issue that has always plagued computer interfaces. Will we finally move away from “desktops” and “folders” toward new ways of thinking about our data and our interface to them?

2. MightyMeeting

MightyMeeting is a tool to help you organize and share your presentations via e-mail, social networks, or live online. Their iPad app shows the potential of a device that’s smaller than a laptop but more powerful than a phone, and might make you think twice before flying somewhere for that next big pitch or presentation. Why not give it from the comfort of your favorite chair?

3. SketchNotes

I’ve been looking for better ways of taking notes for years. I’m more comfortable writing notes than typing, and I tend to draw and sketch ideas alongside my words. My current method, using a Pulse Smartpen, is a step toward what I want, but ultimately I’d like to become paperless. I don’t know that SketchNotes will be exactly what I want, but it looks promising (especially if used with an input device like the Pogo iPhone stylus).

4. MLB 2010

OK, this isn’t educational or productivity-oriented, but it’s really cool. I’ve been a big fan of Major League Baseball’s iPhone product, and the iPad implementation looks top notch. Notice how they make data and live video interact–how could this be applied to more practical endeavors?

5. Captain’s Log

OK, this one’s just for fun. If you’re a Star Trek fan or are heading to this summer’s SIM Conference (theme: SIM Trek), you’ll need a way to keep up on e-mail and social media, right? Check out Captain’s Log to get an idea of how Kirk would have kept up on things if he had an iPad.

What iPad apps are you looking forward to seeing?

By Aaron Sumner | April 2nd, 2010 | View Comments

From last week: Twitter, Depot webcast recordings, blog survey results, bandwidth, and online collaboration tools

It’s Monday again–hope you had a good weekend. Here’s what you may have missed on our blog last week:

On Tuesday I continued my series on budget and time-conscious social networking with a piece on how we use Twitter at Stratepedia.

Also on Tuesday, Amber shared links to the recorded versions of our Depot webcasts from a few weeks ago. Amber’s session is the shorter one, if you’re in a hurry.

On Wednesday, Amber provided some results from her blog content survey from the week before. Amber and I have discussed the results and have some ideas about how to give you more of the content you’re interested in reading–watch for some teacher success stories and interviews in the coming weeks. I have some followup questions I may ask down the road, so I hope you’re not tired of answering survey questions yet.

On Thursday, Amber posted some methods you can use to test your Internet connections speed, otherwise known as bandwidth.

Later on Thursday I posted an important update to our terms of service for the Learning Labs–specifically, we won’t be creating new groups on the Learning Labs effective immediately. Sorry for the inconvenience.

But don’t worry–on Friday I offered five tools to use to collaborate online. This list is by no means exhaustive, and we’ll share more as we learn about them.

Lots of good web links were shared over the course of the week, too.

By Aaron Sumner | March 1st, 2010 | View Comments

How we manage a social media presence on a shoestring, part 3: Twitter

This is the third part of series on being active in social media without spending a lot of time or money. To catch up on previous installments, please browse our archives.

Last week I talked about using TwitterFeed to automatically post links to new items in a blog or podcast. However, Twitter isn’t a one-way street. You’re not the only one pushing content out there–thousands of Twitter users have opinions about things of interest to you, and they’re sharing those opinions in 140 characters or less. If you’re maintaining a brand, it’s important to keep an eye on Twitter chatter around that brand. Most Twitter clients have a built-in search function to help you keep track of what’s being said about specific keywords or hash tags, or you can use Twitter’s web-based search form.

I really recommend using a client, though. TweetDeck, Seesmic, and HootSuite are popular among many power users, though I personally like Tweetie for Mac and iPhone.

We don’t provide a whole lot of formal tech support on Twitter, primarily because we don’t get many requests that way, but I’ve been able to introduce people to our work and to SIM by watching what Stratepedia’s followers are talking about. It’s important to be responsive–I’ve had good and bad luck trying to contact support through Twitter accounts, but the companies that do get back in touch with me always earn bonus points in my book. I also like to spread interesting ideas others have shared on Twitter, to hopefully spread them a little further.

I know most of the people reading this blog aren’t in charge of a brand, so to speak, but keeping an eye on keywords and trending topics on Twitter can help generate ideas for content on your blog–and more generally, help you stay up-to-date in your professional field. Twitter may not make too much sense at first, but give it a try and watch for ways you can use it to spread your message (and the message of others). In other words, use it for more than telling the world what you’re eating for breakfast.

By Aaron Sumner | February 23rd, 2010 | View Comments

How we manage a social media presence on a shoestring, part 2: Keeping the audience connected

Last week, I began a series of posts about making your social media presence manageable, with a series of tips to help you make blogging a more manageable process. Now that we’ve written content, though, and are trying to build an audience, how do we keep them connected and let them know when we’ve got new material for them to read (or listen to or view, if you’re podcasting)?

If our blog is the core of our social media presence, then RSS is the technology that glues it to other services. RSS is typically recognized as an acronym for “Really Simple Syndication,” though I prefer to think of it as “Ready for Some Stories”. Simply put, RSS makes it easy for a reader to keep up-to-date when new content is posted to a blog, newspaper, or other site providing an RSS feed. Instead of you going to each site to see if it’s got something new to read, new content comes to you. We thus provide an RSS feed of our content, so people using a tool like Google Reader, NetNewsWire, or NewsGator can access our news stream anytime.

However, RSS adoption rates vary. Depending on whom your blog’s audience is, you may find that very few of your readers use an RSS reader (or even understand what RSS is). It’s important to make your information available to people via a variety of channels, as opposed to forcing them to adopt specific technologies to access and use your content.

Let’s start with e-mail. We provide a daily e-mail version of the previous day’s blog posts. It’s opt-in, and people can unsubscribe at any time. We use a free service from Google called FeedBurner to handle this. Essentially, FeedBurner listens to our blog’s RSS feed and collects information for each daily e-mail. No new blog posts for the day? Then no e-mail is sent. FeedBurner takes a few minutes to set up, but it’s worth the effort.

Our daily e-mail goes out around 7:30 central time each morning, so we schedule each day’s designated new content to publish around 6:45. This makes sure the new content we want to feature shows up at the top of the e-mail message.

Next up is other social networks. Facebook and Twitter currently rule the roost in terms of overall user bases. We have a Twitter account and Facebook page for users of those services to be notified of new content from us. I’ll talk more in-depth about what we do with Twitter and Facebook in a future post, but the key takeaway here is that the links you see on either to new content on our blog are all posted automatically through a great, free service called TwitterFeed. Create a TwitterFeed account, then point it to an RSS feed you wish to share. You can then schedule new items from that feed to post to Twitter, Facebook, and a few other social networking services automatically.

We’re thus able to spread the word about new blog content in four ways: Through an RSS reader, through a daily e-mail message, through Facebook, and through Twitter. As a blog author, I’ve only had to spend real time focusing on my content and not on distribution. For us as a group, this makes our social media presence manageable and allows us to reach readers using the delivery mechanisms of their preferences.

Next week I’ll dig deeper into how we use Twitter to not only share links to our own content, but share cool work and ideas done by others we meet online.

By Aaron Sumner | February 16th, 2010 | View Comments

5 CRL and SIM technology trends from 2009

Now’s the time of year when people look back, reflect, compile best-of lists, and so on. I thought I’d wrap up Friday Five for the year by taking a look at five new ways Stratepedia and the Center for Research on Learning put technology to use in 2009.

1. Less paper

2009 kicked off with one last printing of Stratedirectory, CRL’s index of SIM® professional developers. A brand new online version took its place and added search functionality not possible in a paper-only edition. PDers can also make updates to their directory profiles online, anytime, and make that new contact information available to other professional developers instantly.

At this summer’s SIM® conference, Patty Graner’s team took a bold leap and placed presenters’ slides and handouts on a portable flash drive, as opposed to sending reams of paper back with each attendee. Not only was this a more green (and economical) approach to dissemination, it probably saved some attendees the added costs of extra checked-in baggage or trips to the chiropractor!

Then, last October, CRL’s final issue of Strategram hit mailboxes in paper form. Our Communications Director, Julie Tollefson, pointed out in that issue that a paper-only format limited the overall message and means in which to communicate it to teachers using SIM®. In the coming months, Strategram‘s replacement will go online-only and feature more multimedia and more accessibility to strategy and routine-specific supports. Archives of past issues of Strategram continue to be available in PDF format in SIMville.

2. More mobile

Did you know that if you look at the online Stratedirectory on an iPhone or Blackberry (or possibly other devices) you’ll see a nice, mobile-friendly version? If you’ve got access to such a device (or an iPod touch) check it out sometime. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we’re going mobile with Stratepedia apps as well (and our blog is iPhone-friendly, too!).

Also on the mobile front, Jim Knight’s Instructional Coaching Group has developed a Time on Task application exclusively for iPhone and iPod touch devices. You can buy it through the App Store, if interested.

3. More social

2009 was the year that social networking technologies went beyond their roots with Millennials and Gen-Xers as the Baby Boom generation latched on to tools like Facebook and Twitter to connect with old friends, family, and remote colleagues. Facebook groups for SIM Professional Developers and the Kansas Coaching Project launched, as did our own “fan” page, as means to help like-minded individuals stay in touch.

Usage of Twitter also jumped leaps and bounds as celebrities like Oprah joined the popular micro-messaging service. CRL began tweeting via @StrateTweets and @KUCRL, and a number of SIM professional developers and instructional coaches tried Twitter on for size. (Not to brag, but we’ve been posting from @stratepedia since 2007!)

Another point on the social networking landscape that grew quite a bit this year is Ning, a tool for essentially creating your own focused social networks. It’s become very popular with educators. The Big Four, a Ning network for instructional coaches, was started by Jim’s Instructional Coaching Group. This network currently boasts 792 members and includes downloadable materials, discussions boards, and links to interesting things Jim finds on the web. Sue Woodruff has also started a Ning group focused on doing action research with SIM®. This relatively new group is already 65 members strong. If you have any interest in either topic I highly recommend joining these Ning networks and collaborating with their members.

4. More video

If you attended the 2007 SIM conference, you may recall us predicting that cheap video cameras were going to change how we teach, learn, work, and share. Fast-forward to the end of 2009, and what’s happened? Between cheap, easy-to-use video devices like Flip cameras, built-in video cameras in mobile phones and computers, and online streaming video, it’s now quicker and cheaper than ever to get a message out with video. The CRL media team posted lots of great footage to the CRL Media Archives, making it available for review or to people who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to catch presentations.

5. Less travel

The private sector has long taken advantage of collaborative technology like webcasts to cut travel costs and extend reach. We did a few webcasts of our own earlier in the year to get a feel for the technology and explore how the CRL could use it in its own work. We’ve gotten a pretty good handle on it, for the most part, and have since held webcasts like one we recently held for the CLC® work going on in Virginia. I personally hope to continue using this technology in the coming year to help people stay up-to-date with the work we do at the CRL, as well as work happening out in the field.

We’re also looking at ways technology can help us connect one-on-one, over a distance. To this end, we’re developing protocols and best practices for coaching via iChat and Skype, including ways to share documents and video clips. With a few new, recently funded projects focusing on this, look for us to make major strides in 2010. You may never have to leave your house!

See you next year!

Friday Five will be back on January 8, 2010, but we’ll otherwise stick to our regular blog schedule between now and then.

Photo: spike55151 on Flickr

By Aaron Sumner | December 18th, 2009 | View Comments

Make tweets manageable with Twitters new Lists feature

Over the past week, Twitter has begun rolling out a highly-anticipated feature called Lists. Sign into your Twitter account and if you see the following message, you can check out this feature for yourself:

Lists are essentially a formalized version of the Groups function in TweetDeck and other Twitter clients. They should be especially useful to anyone following a great number of Twitter users–rather than having to skim your entire stream of recent updates, you can create filters to only show specific users. For example, say I wanted to create a list of CRL and SIM®-related Twitter accounts. I would start by creating the new list:

Next, I go to my list of users I’m following and begin adding users to the list. When I run across one I specify which list to which to add:

My list is accessible to me from my Twitter homepage at any time. I can also share the link with others–here is a list of CRL and/or SIM®-related people on Twitter I’m currently following (you may also opt to make a list private). As usage of lists increases, this will be a good way to discover new people to follow on Twitter.

Look for Twitter clients like Tweetie to add this functionality in the future–in the meantime, use Twitter’s website to create and manage your lists.

By Aaron Sumner | October 20th, 2009 | View Comments

5 useful Twitter add-ons

Hey, it’s Friday! Time for another Friday Five. Today’s topic is for those of you who’ve created Twitter accounts but haven’t figured out what exactly to do with them besides sharing the details of your breakfast or how you feel about last night’s episode of American Idol. Sometimes you need to look beyond Twitter itself to find third-party solutions to common problems–Twitter makes it easy for developers to create their own solutions. Here are five of my favorites.

1. A decent Twitter client

Sure, you can use Twitter’s web interface to post, browse, and search–but I find that Twitter becomes a much more useful tool for communication and zeitgeist tracking when you use a standalone Twitter client. This software runs on your computer, behind the scenes while you’re doing other things, not unlike your e-mail program. It’s ready to go when you want to catch up on new tweets or share your latest thought or interesting link. I personally use Tweetie, a Mac-only application, and its iPhone counterpart.

Other popular clients include TweetDeck, Twhirl, and Seismic; all of which run on Macs and PCs alike. The Twitter Fan Wiki has a lengthy list of Twitter clients–I recommend experimenting with different ones to find what works best for you.

2. FriendOrFollow

As in the real world, Twitter followers and friends may come and go. You’re not given any notification if someone stops following you, and finding this information can become the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack search using Twitter’s interface. FriendOrFollow parses your followers and followees, giving you a visual list of accounts you follow (but they don’t follow you back), accounts following you (but you don’t follow them back), and “friends,” or those you follow that also follow you.

3. TwitterFeed

If you share with others outside of Twitter–through a blog, YouTube channel, or Flickr, for example–TwitterFeed makes automatically sharing new content easy. Just enter the RSS feed for your content and check a couple of settings, and anytime TwitterFeed spots new content it will post a link on Twitter. We use this to share links to new blog content, as well as links to other sites we’ve shared through our Delicious account.

4. TweetStats

Curious about how your Twitter use has evolved over time? What day of the week are you most likely to post? Who do you reply to the most? TweetStats can answer all of these questions and give you some pretty graphs to share with others in the process. It will also generate a “Tweet Cloud” of your most commonly-used words, and even help you compose a Wordle summary of your Twitter prolificacy.

5. What the Trend?

Following trending topics on Twitter is a great way to keep a finger on the zeitgeist. If you’re not sure what that trending topic means, however, visit What The Trend? to find crowdsourced explanations of what keywords and hash tags mean.

How about you?

What are your favorite Twitter tools? If I’ve left out a good one, let us know about it in the comments below, or suggest a topic for a future Friday Five. Have a great weekend!

Photo: Niall Kennedy on Flickr

By Aaron Sumner | August 28th, 2009 | View Comments

SIM 2009 Presentation recap: Links and additional information for getting started with social media

Thanks to everyone who attended our sessions on social media at the 2009 SIM® conference in Lawrence yesterday! Below is a list of the various sites we recommended over the course of those four hours. If I’ve forgotten anything, just leave a comment at the end of this page and I’ll add what’s missing (be a “critic!”). Feel free also to provide any other suggestions about getting started with social technology as well. Thanks again!

General

Groundswell–including the “social technographics” profile tool

Twitter

I dug around a bit to find these links this morning–I hope they help explain or reinforce some of the concepts we discussed about Twitter.

Blogs

Start your own blog:

Posterous–easy, e-mail-driven way to get started blogging
WordPress.com–hosted blogging for more experienced bloggers
Blogger–another blog host

Find other blogs:

Facebook

Teachers Guide to Using Facebook–some of this information applies to social media in general, not just Facebook

RSS Readers

RSS in Plain English–we didn’t talk about this video, but it helps further explain the benefits of RSS
NetNewsWire (Mac)
FeedDemon (Windows)
Google Reader (online)

Podcasts

Note: A podcast can be audio or video (sometimes referred to as a vlog or v-log)

Subscribing to podcasts in iTunes

Ning

Ning–create your own social networks for special interests, community/cooperative learning, etc.
SIM Action Research Ning site
Instructional Coaching/Big Four Ning site

YouTube

Amber’s instructions on saving video with KickYouTube

Copyright and Fair Use

A Fair(y) Use Tale–a 10-minute video explaining copyright and fair use, using short clips from Disney movies
Creative Commons information and search
Image search in Flickr–remember to scroll to the bottom and check the box for Creative Commons search

By Aaron Sumner | July 17th, 2009 | View Comments