Blog Juice for Educational Technology

There use to be, at conferences, a bulletin board, where you could post messages for friends.  This, of course, was before laptops, WiFi, and mobile phones with SMS.  This, of course, was a long time ago (nudge nudge, snicker snicker).  It always seemed kinda useless to me, because I do not think that I ever went and looked at one.  But today, we have Twitter.

A bunch of us, in the Blogger’s Cafe, discovered Twitter and it’s potential at NECC, in Atlanta a few months ago.  I was sort’a on the fringes of this, as folks like Chris Craft, Wesley Fryer, and others started inventing new applications.  I follow a lot of folks, but do not do a lot of twittering myself. 

The Shanghai Learning 2.0 conference seems to be bringing this avenue of conversation to some maturity.  To the right is a picture of Twitter Camp, a concept that I’ve Googled a couple of times, but still haven’t figured out.  Basically, it’s a bulletin board that people can post to, from their laptops or mobile phones.  Of course, since you do not have to be at the board, at any particular time, to use it, and since the board can also be read from your laptop or your mobile phone, it stops being a bulletin board, and starts to be a conversation — just what you want to see happening at conferences.

The image to the right is only good for eavesdropping.  Of course much more can be done with it, as this sort of set up might actually be used during a presentation, so that questions and comments are instantly available to the entire audience.  I haven’t had the courage to do that yet (grin).

Last night, I did run my Twitteresque Chat program, so that my audience could be chatting with each other during my presentation.  I use AjaxChat, so that I do not have to direct people to join Twitter, though I do spend a few minutes explaining Twitters — as best I can.  I think that it is useful to folks during the presentation, and to me afterward, as I hack the transcript of the chat over to a wiki, where I can read and insert my comments.  I was up enjoying that little process until after midnight , last night — way past my bed time.

I got about half way through the chat, when I ran across a comment from a teacher who, when he or she needs to bypass the school’s filter, he or she jumps onto the wifi transmission of one of the homes in the neighborhood.  Interesting.

Anyway, I decided to write about this, when I discovered, scanning through hitchhikr this morning, that the Scottish Learning Festival (starting this week), will be doing very much the same thing.  Ewan Macintosh has called for the Twitter pages of attendees who plan to post comments during and about the conferences.  I assume that he will set up an account to follow all of those Twitters, and then RSS feed them to something — like a Twitter Camp. 

I guess someone needs to explain Twitter Camp to me

BTW, you can enjoy a collage of other pictures from the Learning 2.0 conference here, and at the Scottish Learning Festival here.