Kevin Mulryne

It’s time for part 6 already!

@stuartridout is the generous participant this time. Stuart is about to start a new Assistant Head job and is currently putting together the remarkable #newleaders Twitter project.

In addition to offering some terrific insights into digital identity, personal and private use of Twitter and Twitter for new starters, our conversation covers the phenomenal #pgcetips, the TeachMeet movement, social media safety concerns and the ways schools use Twitter.

Listen to Stuart and then please leave a comment!

Music: Kevin MacLeod Can’t use this flash audio player? Here’s a link directly to the mp3 –  Stuart Ridout on Twitter

Look out for part 7 (if it comes to pass!) – I might come and ask you to take part. If you’d like to be interviewed, please add a comment below or contact me on Twitter – @kevinmulryne

Part 5 features a Skype call via iPhone (with CallBurner of course) with headteacher, @iangilmour. He kindly gave up some holiday time to speak to me about his use of Twitter.

Iain has some very interesting things to say about how his use of Twitter has changed over the years and about his developing attitude to digital identity. Iain has been a dedicated and prolific user of the National College’s private, professional online  community but points out the differences between this ‘walled garden’ and interacting as a headteacher in an open social setting like Twitter.

Truly fascinating stuff. Do listen and leave a comment!

Music: Kevin MacLeod Can’t use this flash audio player? Here’s a link directly to the mp3 –  Iain Gilmour on Twitter

Look out for part 6 – I might come and ask you to take part. If you’d like to be interviewed, please add a comment below or contact me on Twitter – @kevinmulryne

Incredibly, we are now on to part 4 of this mini-series! Perhaps it will turn into a maxi-series. This time I am indebted to @janwebb21 who gave up part of her holiday to talk about Twitter use from the point-of-view of a practising primary teacher. Once again, CallBurner was marvellous.

As you will hear, she has some perceptive and persuasive points to make and manages to coin a number of useful phrases along the way including my favourite, in reference to business and organisational use of Twitter,  ”There’s a balance to be struck between nuisance and information.”

We spoke about an article on the Reuters website you may have seen – Consumers say: “In tweets we trust” Have a read of this and then listen to what Jan as to say.

Look out for part 5 – I might come and ask you to take part. If you’d like to be interviewed, please add a comment below or contact me on Twitter – @kevinmulryne

Part 3 of this series features Judith Christian-Carter, JudithELS on Twitter.  (Also, thanks are due to CallBurner, which coped brilliantly with my connection dropping out!).

Once again, I have not met Judith even though she lives very close to me. As part of my seemingly ever-willing PLN, Judith was keen to help (or so she said) and the resulting conversation is full of insights from a daily user of Twitter both for work and play.

Judith is company director of Effective Learning Solutions and is actively trying to persuade her business partner to embrace social media, as you will hear, so let’s hope this recording will help her in her quest!

Many thanks are due to Judith for agreeing to take part.

Music: Kevin MacLeod Can’t use this flash audio player? Here’s a link to download the mp3 - Judith Christian-Carter on Twitter

Look out for part 4 – I might come and ask you to take part. If you’d like to be interviewed, please add a comment below or contact me on Twitter – @kevinmulryne

After the success of the audio recording I did with @chrisrat (thanks CallBurner!), it seems obvious that talking to as many people as possible about their prvate/personal use of Twitter and other social media is going to be really productive.

So here’s the next in a growing series – @susanbanister who works for Channel 4 Learning.

Her company is at the beginning of its journey into social media and Susan has some fascinating insights to share in Part 2:

Music: Kevin MacLeod Can’t use this flash audio player? Here’s a link to download the mp3 - Susan Banister  on Twitter

Look out for part 3 – I might come and ask you to take part. If you’d like to be interviewed, please add a comment below or contact me on Twitter – @kevinmulryne

Yesterday I listened to the latest episode of the fantastic Explicit Web podcast. If you are interested in web design, you really ought to subscribe – it’s hosted by 3 engaging designers who choose some very varied and interesting topics to discuss. (Warning – they occasionally swear when they are excited/annoyed.) One of this week’s topics was particularly relevant to something I have been thinking about recently and something I am researching for the National College – how companies and organisations use Twitter.

How do companies and organisations use Twitter?

The guy on the podcast (sorry I can’t remember his name) identifies two ways of using Twitter. Actually I think there are more than this and it’s impossible to categorise all use into definite categories but here’s basically what he was saying:

1. Twitter for updates – no human element, no direct interaction
2. Twitter for conversation – human contact and intentional, personal interaction

He likened type 1 to an RSS feed. In fact, he bemoaned the fact that he often receives the same information via RSS and Twitter so ends up unfollowing the offending Twitter account. Is this a problem? If you work for an organisation (any kind) or business, do you split up your Tweets into a ‘news’ Twitter feed and a ‘personal’ Twitter feed? Do you use your personal account for business tweets or do you/can you keep them separate? I think it’s more likely that there is a third way.  I think personal tweets will always blur into work and vice-versa as this is the way humans interact and it’s the way I think Twitter encourages.

How should you behave in a Tweeted world?

Is it necessary to be genuine in all you tweet? Should you be yourself in your personal Twitter account? Should you avoid selling your company or organisation’s wares? It looks like a difficult balancing act.

Step forward the expert – Chris Ratcliffe!

Someone I have followed on Twitter for ages who seems to manage this blurred identity effortlessly is @chrisrat. So I was delighted that he agreed to let me pick his brains and record the output via Skype and the excellent CallBurner. Here’s his Prezi on the subject of e-marketing and our subsequent conversation:

Music: Kevin MacLeod Can’t use this flash audio player? Here’s a link to download the mp3 – Chris Ratcliffe on Twitter Photo credit: framer2009

How does your garden grow?

Dr Kathy Seddon – online learning guru and famous Welsh person (@kathyseddon) recently asked me to tell her everything I know about Twitter.

She called it a ‘brain dump’.

It took some time, as you can imagine.

Later on she described me as a ‘digital gardener’. This is not an expression I had heard before but it struck a bit of a chord so I thought I’d share my thinking and a few questions.

If you have heard this term before, do let me know as I’d like to credit the originator. UPDATE: see the comments below!

GARDENER? CURATOR? IMMIGRANT? RESIDENT?

The debate around the usefulness of terms like ‘digital natives’ and ‘digital immigrants’ has raged for years, as I’m sure you know. Like all labels, these can useful as starting points for debate but don’t stand up to proper analysis. There’s always a risk they will be used as shortcuts to avoid discussing or analysing the real issues.

• “They will be fine with this technology – they’re all digital natives.”
• “We can’t ask them to do that – they are digital immigrants and won’t be able to cope.”

Recently, I have also heard the term ‘curator’ a lot and, once again, it is used with the assumption that all the audience understand what it means – it is used as shorthand. I have to say it seems a bit dry to me.

BETT 2010

At the BETT show in January I took part in a discussion with (amongst others) @daveowhite about digital identity and he introduced me to the concepts of ‘digital residents’ and ‘digital vistors’. As I work in e-learning for adults at the moment this made a lot of sense.

I would classify myself most definitely as a ‘digital resident’ – hence this blog! I work to maintain and develop my online persona via blogging, twitter, posterous, delicious, Moblog, Moby Picture etc. In fact, after seeing @tombarrett ‘s home page I have set up http://everything.mulryne.com to collect a lot of these together. This sounds quite like a gardener, tending plants and creating the right conditions for growth. I tend the places on the web where I reside – I want them to grow and portray me in a positive way- to be a fruitful expression of my (online) personality.

ADULT LEARNERS

However, many (but crucially not all) of the adults I work with are very much ‘digital visitors’ – they like the web, they are not necessarily scared of it but they want to get on, get what they want and then get off again – leaving no trace that they have been there. It reminds me of the way I used the internet way back in the early 90s when I paid by the minute.

So how can we facilitate learning for groups of adults who might be ‘digital residents’ or ‘digital visitors’? What difference does it make? How far down the age range does it go?

Certainly, I’d say that every time I hear someone use one of these terms from now on, I’m going to question exactly what they mean and whether or not it’s just an excuse to avoid the hard work of analysing our audience properly.

Why don’t you do the same?

Creative Commons image credit

What do humans need not only to survive but to thrive? Above and beyond basic biological needs and setting aside spiritual needs for the moment, I’d say these are a few of the essentials:

• The need for music
• The need to dance
• The need for stories
• The need to create
• The need for community

As I was growing up, my need to create was a powerful force. I realised one day that whenever I felt down, my personal therapy consisted of being creative.

I used to sit down with a pad and a cheap, retractable pencil and copy illustrations from ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there’. I still have the pictures, now in digital format, courtesy of http://www.wiqet.com/

Nowadays, my creative needs are satisfied in a number of different ways including writing music. I sing with my son in Holy Trinity Church Choir and we have performed some  responses I wrote several times in the last year.

A CREATIVE CHALLENGE

At the beginning of this year I decided that I would set myself the task of completing six anthems for Holy Trinity Choir in 2010. It is the 800th Anniversary of the Church so it seems like a good idea to mark this personally. I feel that I will only actually succeed in finishing some serious music if I have this kind of deadline – I have been meaning to write properly for many years.

The other reason I feel the time is right for this is the discovery of a free music notation program, Muse Score, which is fantastic. I used to use Sibelius but it’s rather complicated and I can’t possibly afford the updates.

So I am underway with the Six Anthems for 2010. The first is almost complete – Into Thy Hands I Commend My Spirit.

Look out for updates.

I’m at the BETT Show in London this week and something strange has happened to me. I’ve started acting out of character. I tend to be quite a shy person, prefering to watch from the sidelines rather than get involved with people but my use of Twitter at the show this year has been transformational.

THE FAMOUS WI-FI T-SHIRT

Even before I arrived at BETT, @ProperCoffee, @phillhowson, @architela and @peter_s_clarke had convinced me to wear my geek Wi-Fi T-shirt in my breaks from stand duty. I think without their encouragement I probably wouldn’t have bothered. So here’s the proof:

Transformational? Well if you know me, you’d probably agree this is a bit of a departure. It’s a bit of fun but not the kind of fun I usually take part in…

So, spurred on by my new-found confidence, I started to take part in #BETTtig on Twitter. This meant I got to meet both @dughall and @deerwood who both turned up at the National College stand at the same time. I BETTtigged @deerwood and so the game continued.

TEDx AND THE ‘I CAN’ BUG

After a torrent of tweeting during the day, I decided to see if I could get into the TEDx Orenda event, despite not having a ticket – again, this is out of character for me! It turned out to be very straightforward to get into and I settled down with the trusty mobile to check the tweets via the official tag #TEDx.

An inspirational video from Kiran Bir Sethi set the tone for the evening as we heard the story of how Indian children have been empowered through what she calls the ‘I can’ bug. In this spirit, I sought out various Twitter contacts including @DawnHallybone, @TerryFreedman and someone I have wanted to meet for a very long time, @Alfie, who was one of the presenters. It was a fantastic event with a wide variety of quality speakers.

I could have sloped away after the event and in previous years I think I would have done but the momentum built up by my Twitter activities  and TEDx led me to introduce myself to people who were, without exception, warm, friendly and keen to talk.

TWITTER AT BETT – GET INVOLVED!

So, without wishing to labour the point, I have had an incredible first day at BETT this year and it was all thanks to Twitter and the fantastic folk in my Personal Learning Network. What will day 2 bring? See you on Twitter… #BETT2010