This weekend one of my friends asked me: “So what do we think about Path?”. What DO we think about Path?

I installed it about 8 weeks ago. In fact Path tells me two months and 285 moments ago. I can’t remember who originally suggested it to me. It was at the beginning of a month’s travel around Europe and I had intermittent internet access. This meant I was mainly in capture & broadcast mode (journaling my travels) rather than access & curate mode (monitoring and sharing from information streams). And Path is great for capture & broadcast.

I fell in love with  it, even though I did have to move it to the front page of my iPhone first, so I wouldn’t forget to use it, and go to one of my other services instead. Here’s 5 reasons I do so like Path.

It’s personal

I think the key reason I like Path is that it is intensely personal. Path only lets you post your personal updates. It has various artifacts you can create: a check-in, an update, a picture, a music-update, but all of those are originally created by you, based on an experience you are having. You can’t “re-Path” someone else artifacts either, so only your artifacts live in your Path.

Friends can take several different actions in response to your artifacts, they can Smile, Laugh, Gasp, Be Unhappy, or Love it, and also leave a comment, giving Path a little more finesse than just the Facebook Like or Twitter Favourite or Retweet.

You can include your friends in any update by using the “I’m With” function. This works for anyone on Path, but if your friends are not on Path, you can still include Facebook, Twitter or friends in your Contacts. Only their first name will be used.

The lack of external content, no links, no lolcats, no game updates, no witty videos, makes Path a very different and very human experience.

It’s pretty

Path got its interface right and is much more attractive to look at and to use than some of the big social media giants’ apps, like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. I think this may be because Path is not trying to mimic a website. Particularly not a website that had design flaws in the first place (yes, that’s you Facebook) or a website that is contorted in adding superfluous functionalities beyond its initial function which it did exquisitely (and that’s you Twitter). Path had the freedom to design its app for a single purpose (personal broadcasting) and with mobile and gesture in mind, and that shows.

It has a cover/profile pic combination that most will recognise from the new Facebook Timeline layout, but I had Path before I switched my Wall to Timeline, and I can’t help thinking that Path is what Facebook was trying to achieve (and certainly in its mobile app, fails).

The Chooser where you go to perform an action, is just lovely, and much nicer than a row of links, blocks or buttons.

It’s packaged

Path packages several types of social media actions I regularly perform, into one platform, all started from the pretty Chooser. It also adds one update I didn’t perform but would find great if it was cross-platform.

Location update: I usually use Foursquare for this. With Path I can post a location check-in to Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare and believe me, its location finder is much more robust than Foursquare. You know the “Foursquare Servers are busy” message? Hasn’t happened on Path… However the link with Foursquare is good, and so your check-ins do count.

Photography update: Path photos are very nice indeed and it comes with a good selection of remarkably effective filters (although you have to pay for others). I was using Instagram for this, and find it a pity that Path doesn’t link to Instagram, as I miss out on my Instagram community interactions. However it does allow posting to Twitter and Facebook, and when posting to Facebook, they all go into a Path album on Facebook, making the photos taggable. This is something Instragram has only recently managed and was a big bugbear for me.

Unfortunately when you send a pic to Twitter with Path it doesn’t end up in your Twitter stream of pics (via TwitPic) but just becomes a link to Path, as you can see below. A bit of a fail, that one…

Very Monty Python [pic] — path.com/p/1XdSwX

— Joyce Seitzinger (@catspyjamasnz) January 28, 2012

Creating Path pictures is easy and beautiful. Sharing and re-using them is not so easy. It doesn’t have an embed function on the web page. I’d love for Path pictures to go to Flickr and Instagram.

Music update: I like to share what I’m listening to and follow my friends’ music tips too. It’s how I’m introduced to new bands or genres these days, rather than radio or tv. I used to use Blip.fm but then my use was browser-based. I gave it up when it became buggy and my browser kept crashing. I then switched to Soundtracking on my iPad and iPhone, but my use was intermittent, I never built up a huge community and with my last update, it also became buggy, crashing out frequently. With the Path app I can share songs in Path, which is just with a small group, but I can widen that by choosing to share with Facebook and/or Twitter as well.

Status update: You can write a status and per status, choose to share only in Path, or to also post to one of the four linked services, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare or Tumblr.

The Sleep or Awake update: This one is new for me. Basically you can set a notification in Path that your are asleep. Path posts this in your timeline, usually accompanied by the time, and sometimes an automated status update or comment, eg “Must have been a busy day” if you go to sleep early. While you are asleep you don’t get notifications from Path. How nice would it be to have a universal Sleep function that was cross-platform? You say “I’m asleep” in one platform, and all the others Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Path, WordPress and other notifications are off. I know people will say: “Why don’t you just turn off your smartphone?” but the fact is sometimes I want peace and quiet, but I do want to be reachable by txt, phone call and for my alarm clock.

The “I’m Awake” function held a bit of a surprise, as it makes for a nice communal morning experience, as you and your friends in the same city or region all wake up, particularly on work days.

It propagates

Path can propagate my updates/artifacts to one of four main services. To expand on what I wrote above. You can write a status and per status, choose to share only in Path, or to also post to one of the four linked services, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare or Tumblr. This works not just for Status updates, but also for pictures, music and location updates.

I’m not a Tumblr user.  I do use the other three avidly and for overlapping but different purposes, and with overlapping but different networks. So being able to select per status which network is appropriate is great. I know there are other services that allow this, but Path makes it very easy with four tickboxes at the bottom of any  update or artifact creation page, whether that’s a regular status update, a picture, location or music update.

You can think of Path as a “feeder app” for the three sisters: Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare.

It’s private

When I say private, I don’t mean it’s closed. It is that too. Path itself states: “Path should be private by default. Forever. You should always be in control of your information and experience.” I’m not sure how they relate this to pictures being public on the Path website as my picture is here. But this may be a setting I haven’t found yet.

But by private, I mean intimate. That is mainly due to the relatively small uptake and who is using it in my circles. The 20 or so people I’ve connected with are all avid experienced social media users, like @haikugirloz, @playnice_nz and @daveymelb. They realise intuitively that Path is a medium and interface that can easily get flooded by too many posts. They also seem to understand that its interface calls for aesthetic, personal updates. So the photos my friends post are artful and intimate, the music they share is one song, just to indicate their current mood, the statuses they post are entertaining and personal.

And I think this last may also be Path’s downfall. It works best when used in a small network by personal friends who are all social media savvy. With no grouping (circles, lists, etc) option, you can’t structure your network into manageable streams. So if I had 450 Path friends (as I do on Facebook), the Path would be flooded and unnavigable.

It’s sad, as I love the app, but I wonder whether it will survive, or at least survive in its current pretty, personal form.

Jetlag is wreaking havoc on my sleep patterns. So on the phone to people downunder at 5.30am, I got a tweet from my mate Steve to check out #pencilchat.

And promptly lost the next hour of my life to a highly entertaining conversation that can only happen when you mix experienced education technologists, the risk-averse environment they work in and Twitter. At one point I had tears running down my cheeks. Here are a few gems, but please, do go check the stream for yourself. It’s cathartic. And dare I say, a little pointed…

And one of my own contributions.

Last Friday the Hawke’s Bay Tweetup (#hbtweetup) was kindly hosted by The Crossing restaurant. The lovely drinks and positively gorgeous food were enjoyed by all the Hawke’s Bay tweeps. But The Crossing offered us another benefit, a data projector, discovered a week before during my reccie. The wonderfully hospitable Richard gave us a code for the wireless and after hooking up a laptop, we had our first #hbtweetup twitterwall.

It was a little distracting at times. In fact at the start of the evening conversation was a little slower than usual as we were mesmerized by the stream, like budgies by a mirror. However, as people became used to it, it became a natural part of the evening’s interactions. Jokes were made via the wall, apologies received, contact with the outside world established with tweets coming from the rest of the Bay, other tweetups in Rotorua and Hamilton, and even from Canada and Australia (we love you too @courosa and @marksmithers).

Why have a Twitterwall at your tweetup?

Most people who attend tweetups bring their own Smartphone which will let them access Twitter via their Twitter apps. However participants have to disengage from the conversation in front of them, to check the digital conversation only available in their pocket. Projecting the Twitterstream on the wall brings the digital conversation into the room in a much more accessible form, allowing the two conversation streams to blend better.

Where else can you use a Twitterwall?

There are of course many applications for a Twitterwall, but here’s three I would encourage people to use in my own education context.

Conferences: this is where I’ve seen Twitterwalls used the most. At a conference you bring together anywhere between 100-300 experts (or even more) on a certain topic. Traditionally only 20-40 people at that conference would be heard from, the presenters. The opinions/contributions/comments/questions of the other attendees were either locked in their own notes, or maybe shared with a few of the people they spoke to at coffee or lunch. The great thing about Twitter and similar tools is that it brings those contributions out into the open, available to conference participants and the wider world in a many-to-many conversation, often referred to as the backchannel.

Lecture theatre: The backchannel function described above can easily be applied to teaching large groups. Projecting students’ tweets on a wall can stimulate discussions, illicit contributions and provide information sharing on a scale impossible in a traditional lecture. Do view the video The Twitter Experiment if you want to see how this has been put in action at the University of Texas.

Learning spaces: If you have open learning spaces in your institution, you may want to set up monitors displaying a Twitterwall, allowing learning services, librarians, IT services and others, to share information as well as students & teachers. In this way, the Twitterwall can become a support mechanism for a vibrant learning community.

What tools to use?

On Friday night we switched between four of my favourite Twitterwall tools. Most Twitterwall tools provide you with a set up screen and then allow you to go to full screen mode for use at events.

Visible Tweets: without doubt the prettiest. It displays individual tweets, which can fall into view either in a rotation motion or letter by letter, you choose. The background colour cycles softly through the colours of the rainbow. It’s good for sharing information snippets, but not so good for following a conversation. I thought it was the least intrusive of the four tools we experimented with.

Wiffiti: recently demonstrated to me by @moodleman at the Skills Tasmania conference. It shows about 6-8 random tweets at one time but reaches back about 4 hours in the stream to source them. However it does seem to show more recent tweets more often. The tweets jump into place quite nicely. And it’s easy to see the Twitter user who posted the tweet. This tool is a little better for following a conversation. You can save your wall for future use once set up. A drawback is that it displays mobile numbers that can be used for texting to it. However these don’t work in NZ. I’m not sure in which country they do work.

Twitterfountain: This tool has many settings, allowing you to customize your wall quite a bit. It’s very attractive as it rotates fullscreen pictures behind the tweets. These are sourced from Flickr or Picasa. We did try this on Friday, but none of our uploaded tagged pictures ever appeared on the wall. Tweets appear in a kind of dynamic waterfall which is appealing. However they do cycle, so it’s not a linear representation of the conversation. Also, make sure you set to speed to quite low, as it can lead to motion sickness.

Twitterfall: Probably allows for the most tailoring of the Twitter stream. Tweets can be restricted by geolocation and tweets can be excluded from the stream based on keywords. It displays tweets in a linear, chronological fashion. However, of all the tools mentioned here, Twitterfall is probably the least visually appealing.

Two others Twitterwall tools I like

Tweetwally: Has an interface that is very similar to a regular Twitter page, so recognisable for participants. This is the only Twitterwall tool I know of which shows Twitpic & Yfrog pictures in line with the tweets, making it a visual and a text-based communication tool. It also shows tweets in a linear chronological fashion making it easy to follow the conversation stream. My only hesitation would be that the tweets take up quite a bit of space on the page, meaning you see less of the conversation. You can sign in with your Twitter account and save the wall for future use.

Monitter: Is a very clean, simple looking linear Twitterwall. Tweets are displayed so quite a few fit on one page, making it easy to follow the conversation. Profile pics are large making it easy to recognise the contributors. Monitter allows the setup of several parallel columns to display several different streams on one screen. This is something the other tools don’t have. Another nice feature is the ability to restrict tweets shown based on geography.

If you have other Twitterwall tools you favour or ideas on how to use them, please share them below.

The social media response to the 2010 Canterbury Earthquake has been fascinating. I’d like to know more so I’m appealing for people to help with their experiences of social media, its usefulness, how informative it was (or not) etc, during this event. What can we learn?

If you are willing to help, please fill out the form at http://moourl.com/eqnzstudy. Thank you!

The New Zealand twitterverse is still abuzz, as people share information about the 2010 Canterbury Earthquake and its consequences.  Now, 3 days in, these tweets are increasingly about services being restored, relief offers and businesses and organisations exchanging information & aid.

Here I want to make a special mention of the University of Canterbury which has set up a special Twitter account for news about its recovery.

Also interesting to watch organisations like ASB Bank & the NZ Red Cross supporting each other through Twitter.

Most people and official news outlets are now using the hashtag #eqnz, thus consolidating the information flow. As of this afternoon it had been used 18199 times on Tuesday at 6.30pm (updated Tue 07-09-2010).

I’ve been following the use of social media in this event and reported a little about two of the hashtags that were in use in an earlier post. I’ve been RTing useful tweets with the now prevailing #eqnz tag so they get a better spread.

In this process I’ve also received a few nasty tweets and comments about what some are calling “the hashtag war”. One person commenting:

“I don’t want to extend the #eqnz vs #christchurchquake war. I think it is the most stupid bit of fussing when the world is literally falling down around us.”

When the world is falling down around you, you need a few things: water, food, shelter and…information

If you are not a regular social media user, you may well agree. However, when the world is falling down around you, you need a few things: water, food, shelter and…information.  In the early hours, many grabbed their mobile phones (closer to their beds than the battery-powered radios in their survival kits) and went to Twitter, because Twitter is all about sharing information. But to do this effectively, the information must be A. findable, B. usable and C. shareable.

A. Findable

The information that you broadcast through Twitter is publicly available on your Twitter profile page (here’s mine). However very few people will go and visit this page. Instead they will access their own home page, which displays a steady stream of the latest tweets of all the people that they are ‘following’. This stream is updated almost-live, every minute or so.

So now you find yourself in a major event, and you want your information to be findable beyond the 143 odd people that follow you.  You also want to find information from other sources than just the 156 odd people that you follow. Saturday morning at 4.35 they may not have been awake yet. Well, this is where Twitter search but more importantly, hashtags come in. By using a common hashtag (a keyword preceded by the hash symbol) and then doing a search for that hashtag, Twitter users can have a shared conversation beyond the boundaries of their usual Twitter network.

In the case of an event like this, it is impossible to  have a pre-agreed hashtag as people do for eg conferences (see ULearn10 in Christchurch this week). So instead you monitor the wider Twitter stream for a while, doing several searches, until you find common hashtags. In the initial stages you may use 2 or more hashtags, but once a dominant hashtag emerges, it is essential that you use this. If you are the provider of crucial information, eg NZ Civil Defence or a news channel, using the common hashtag is how your tweets will be findable.

B. Usable

The information you broadcast, your tweets, must be usable.  The 140 character limit of a tweet is its strength but also its weakness. For your tweet to be usable in a crisis, it must be immediately informative in those few characters. If you want to share more, then link to a place where the rest of the information can be found. Links can become quite long (not desirable in a tweet) so you use a ‘url shortener‘ to make them an acceptable length (abt 20 characters). Most Twitter applications will do this automatically. If you do make use of links, then also make sure your tweet is an accurate description of what people will find when they click on that link. In a crisis, you don’t want to be wasting anyone’s time.

Informative #eqnz tweet by @siobhanbulfin:

One of the less usable tweets coming from the NZ Civil Defence Twitter account:

C. Shareable

In the case of a major event the information needs to flow, it needs to spread. So you design your tweets to be easily shared. How do you do this?

• Don’t take up too much space with Twitter functionality such as your username. Of course during the event it’s too late to change your name, but if you are about to open a twitter account then consider this: @minedunz would have been 5 characters shorter than @mineducationnz.
• Use the shorter hashtag. Of course you will be driven by the prevailing hashtag, but if you get in early, then encourage the use of the shorter option.
• Use short sentences. It helps to write in the active voice, leaving out definite articles (such as ‘the’) and prefaces eg ‘Cracks in windows.’ rather than ‘There are cracks appearing in the windows”.
• Aim to make your tweet a re-tweetable length when the hashtag is included. The formula for this is: 140 characters – your twittername characters – 4. How does that work? Well 140 characters is standard length for a tweet, but when it’s retweeted, it will include the following: RT @twittername. So that would be 14 characters. However you may want to make it shorter yet to give retweeters some room to add their comments. Often done by adding eg “<- important!” or “<- wow!”. 100 characters is probably a very good length for a tweet in a crisis event to keep it shareable.

So that’s what we can keep in mind for the next earthquake or volcanic eruption, whichever comes first here in New Zealand: we should try to keep our information on Twitter findable, usable & shareable.

With the earthquake in Christchurch yesterday morning, Twitter has become an important source of information, aid, support & humour. And its not just pointless babble (as an aside: the qualification of pointless babble was refuted by the excellent Danah Boyd). Here’s some of  the things people are sharing through their tweets:

• pictures of damage
• videos of the quakes and of damage
• checking in with friends, family & whanau
• reactions & commiseration on the aftershocks, the loss of electricity, the loss of property, the cold
• information on safety eg turn off your gas & power mains
• links to information from the seismic drums at Geonet
• links to news articles (both New Zealand and around the world)
• information about road closures and the curfew last night
• links to public information, eg how to claim for damages with the Earth Quake Commision or which schools are closed on Monday

And the twitterstream is not just being fed by people living in the region, but from across New Zealand and beyond. With all this it can become quite hard to track all this earthquake information or get an overview of it.

So here’s a short demonstration of how I’ve been monitoring the earthquake twitterstream. Hope you find it useful.

Note: most Twitter clients have a version available for smart phones. It’s much easier than tweeting by txting.

After helping organise a staff development day about 21st C Learning (more about that later), I find myself musing on the link between feedback and encouragement as reciprocal actions.

This was a day with mixed ability and experience staff, all encouraged to take the next step up on their education technology skills ladder. They did this in groups, led by a colleague who is more experienced.

Usually what happens with these ‘traditional-style’ staff development sessions is that a survey is sent the next week to staff (the ‘happy sheets‘). Did you find this useful? That’s interesting but not as interesting as asking again 6 weeks later, are you still using your newly acquired skills? If not, why not? If yes, how else can we help you?

Now a little red cynical me, popped up on my shoulder, and said: “of course they will not still be using it in 6 weeks”. There’s rivalling priorities (research, clinical placements, marking) and suddenly what was claimed today to be a timesaver (Moodle quizzes, Flip videos), seems like just too much work.

But then I thought, wait a minute, that is my responsibility too. How can I encourage and support them over the next 6 weeks, so they will continue to use these skills?

My preference would be to run staff development through networked learning. Inducting staff into an education technology network of like-minded colleagues, would make on-going encouragement and support easy. But this is not a part of our institution (yet – give me time ).

So in traditional staff development situations (one day, 2 days, a 2-hour workshop), how do I deal with my side of the bargain? If participants are expected to continue using a newly acquired skill and give me feedback on my workshop/my work, then my side is to provide active encouragement & support (more than just being on the end of a phone or email). But being realistic about my available time too, as only e-learning advisor in an institution of 350 staff.

Options to keep my side of the bargain within current institution structures:

• Use the newly set up Faculty community page to provide links to examples and instruction videos
• Send weekly emails to the group with interesting education technology and 21st C learning news
• Send 3 surveys for feedback, 1 next week, 1 in 6 weeks, 1 at end of the year. These need to be informative & snappy, but not happy sheets
• Encourage the staff with more education technology experience to share examples of their work on the Faculty community page
• Run virtual debates via the Faculty community page. Some valid questions and worries were posed today about use of social media in education. This conversation can be continued
• Ask faculty managers to take active role in encouraging continued ed tech use (through above mentioned methods).

Any other suggestions?

Last week Friday I started a fun little Twitter event called Tour de Moodle. Interested in seeing other people’s Moodle setups, layouts and themes, I asked people to share a link to their Moodle homepage.

Tour de Moodle tweetout

I thought it would be a perfect end-of-year activity, but last weekend was embarrasingly quiet (cue: tumbleweeds). However, after a week the Tour de Moodle now seems to be getting a little traction (thanks to @adzebill, @moodleman, @moodlerific, @dafyddhumphreys and @joseph_thibault).

You can see the stops the Tour de Moodle has made so far at What the Hashtag (my favourite twitter archiver at the moment): http://wthashtag.com/Tourdemoodle

Participating is easy, just send out a tweet including:

• a link to your organisation’s Moodle homepage
• the hashtag #tourdemoodle
• the hashtag #moodle
• optional: “Pls share yr Moodle too”

Looking forward to watching your Moodles race by! Currently the yellow jersey holder is @kineoopensource.

I love serendipitous learning. This week I followed the ASCILITE Conference held in Auckland on Twitter (am still kicking myself for not being there). There’s many thoughts, links & ideas I need to follow up on with regards to education technology in higher education. But what I love about  the powered up information exchange between people who share a passion that builds around an event like this, is the accidental or perhaps offhand tips that get shared that otherwise you’d never find out about.

An example of this today was a Twitter exchange between James Clay & Mark Smithers. Although they were discussing the role of IT departments in higher education, in passing James suggested that Mark install WPTouch for WordPress so his blog would render better on an iPhone.

I hadn’t optimised my blog yet so decided to install WPTouch as well. It took me about 5 seconds to install and it makes my site look just shiny on the iPhone. Thanks James!

Over the next few months I will be testing an iPhone for work. They’ve asked me to make a project out of it, so I’ll blog about issues & opportunities I encounter in iPhone use here. This is now my first post for this project – check!