I have been experimenting with Google+, Google’s new social networking tool. Google+ has elements of blogging , Facebook and Twitter. In my mind, its circles allow you to organise your communications better than Twitter and Facebook. For example, you can organise your contacts into separate circles to discuss say ‘educational technology’ ,’photography’ or ‘politics’ . Contacts can be in one or more circles. Similarly you can belong to one or more of your contacts’ circles.
From what I have seen and contributed so far, posts seem to be shorter and less reflective than blog posts but longer than Twitter’s 140 characters. I have only found Twitter useful for announcements or as a back channel at conferences. I’ve never become much of a Facebook fan either – as I rarely want to share the same messages with family, friends or colleagues. I value boundaries. I don’t share Alec Couros belief (as in his keynote ‘Why Networked Learning Matters‘ at Ed-Media 2011) in the need to create a public digital identity complete with personal photos.
Google+ posts can be +1 (liked), shared or commented on. Comments are nested under the post which makes far easier reading than a Twitter timeline. You can also ‘chat’ and use a webcam in your circles. Have a look for yourself at Google+
August 12th, 2011
#edmedia11 was the most tagged tweet in Portugal during the Ed-Media conference, according to the organisers, the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). STAT – the Semantic Analysis Twitter Tool – gives a detailed analysis of the 3,745 tweets in its archive. Crismattos was the most prolific tweeter with 496 tweets, compared to my modest 11 tweets. The most tweeted terms included learning (288), open (182) and keynote (181).
While tweets are written on the spot, blog posts are typically written after the event when the writer has had time to digest and reflect on the conference. A Google search (4 pages deep) found the following blog posts and one wiki page about Ed-Media 2011:
July 20th, 2011
George Siemens, Erik Duval and others introduced openness as a conference theme to about 700 participants at Ed-Media 2011 in Lisbon.
George Siemens is well-known for his work on connectivism uses social media such as his blog to act as an influencer both with academics and the wider public. His latest ventures include Massive Online Open Courses such as his Change MOOC and the Univerity of Illinois’ Online Learning Today & Tomorrow and Mendeley,(still under development) is a social network for academics. Despite, or may be because of, his high profile and activity in social media, George is still working on his PhD.
Despite its emphasis on social networking, the conference structure was quite traditional with keynotes and lots and lots of PowerPoint presentations, some well-designed and presented others consisting of text heavy pages or lots of bullet points. Some more group activities and discussion would have been welcome.
July 1st, 2011
