Monthly Archives: October 2013

Thing 9 2013: Storify and other tools

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We’ve covered quite a lot this week already, so this final post is a bit more of a fun one. We’ll take a quick look at tools that let you aggregate and share information from other social media and online sources, starting with Storify.

Storify is a way of bringing together content from across the web to create ‘social stories’, which you can then share. It’s an easy way to combine different media on a particular subject – say, a conference or an event – in a nice, embeddable format. As an example, here’s a Storify I made of last year’s 23 Things Twitter chat, which follows the online discussion through the various questions posed. You’ll see it includes blog posts as well as tweets, and I’ve annotated it with some notes and headings. Storify can pull information from news outlets, websites, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and more. Take a look at the featured stories on the Storify homepage and see what it can do.

Storify

A look at Storify

You can sign into Storify using your Facebook or Twitter account (or your email if that’s easier). Once you’re signed in, it’s easy to get started. Use the button at the top to ‘Create a story’. You’ll be asked to add a title (‘headline’) and an optional description, then you can use the icons in the right-hand-side column to search various media (Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc.) for content. You can drag any items you want to include over onto your story on the left, and drag them around to reorder as you like (if you want more info, Storify provides detailed instructions). When you’re happy with what you’ve made, click ‘Publish’ (you can also save for later), and you’re done! You can get a link to embed your story on a website, share it via social media or email, or simply give others the link to visit.

There are other tools that allow you to aggregate and publish information from various sources. Paper.li, for example, allows you to create online newspapers of stories and links (there’s a great quick guide on the paper.li website). Scoop.it allows you to do the same thing – see Scoop.it help for info).

Blog post
Spend some time exploring these tools and stories/papers generated by them. Compare them – can you see them being used for different purposes? Is one easier to read then the other? What might you use them for? Tag your post ‘Thing 9’.

Further reading

Thing 8 2013: RSS Feeds

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What are RSS feeds?
RSS (Rich Site Summary – often called Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed format that provides the full text of web content together with links to the original source.

Why use them?
Although RSS feeds are losing favour with some people, who prefer to use Twitter, Facebook, etc. to stay up to date, RSS feeds save you time and energy by bringing together articles and information and allowing you to read them in one place – the information comes to you! Many websites and blogs allow you to set up RSS feeds for their content. RSS feeds are also commonly available from databases which allow you to subscribe to feeds for journal articles on a specific topic. In this way you can be alerted whenever new content is added to your favourite websites or when a new issue of an e-journal is published.

RSS feeds are also useful if you run your own website. We’ve provided a link on this blog, for example, to an RSS feed that lets you subscribe to our content.

Task
To set up RSS feeds, you need to sign up to a feed reader or aggregator – software that checks RSS feeds and displays updated content. There are many available. Free web-based readers, e.g. Feedly, let you check RSS feeds from any computer whereas downloadable desktop clients, e.g. FeedDemon, let you store them on your own computer. Many tools have apps and sync to the cloud, so your feeds are up to date wherever you are. You are free to choose your own; we used to focus on Google Reader, but it shut down earlier this year, allowing numerous ‘new’ contenders to pop up. Some options:

  • Feedly: A really simple and easy to use tool that has lots of sharing capabilities (send to email, save to Evernote or Pocket, tweet or send to Facebook, etc.)
  • Digg: A ‘social’ news aggregator that also provides RSS capabilities
  • Tiny Tiny RSS: Good for DIY types – requires a bit more work and you have to set it up on your own server, but allows lots of customisation and doesn’t depend on other services
  • Pulse: A very visual, magazine-like RSS reader
  • Newsvibe: A simple, pared down reader without all the extras

Here at 23 Things, we’re most familiar with Feedly, and it’s certainly one of the popular choices – but feel free to try any others (and please report back on what you think if you do).

Most blogs and many websites will allow you to subscribe via RSS, even if they don’t have a specific button or link for it. Many web browsers will offer a subscribe button up in the address bar or the bookmarks menu. If you don’t see a subscription link, copy and paste the feed’s URL into the ‘Add Content’ box or ‘Subscribe’ box in your reader.

You should aim to subscribe to at least five other feeds. You may want to add some of the other 23 Things bloggers, or perhaps your favourite news blog or site.

Exploring further

  • Explore tools that allow you manage subscriptions. In Feedly, there are options at the top and bottom of each item that allow you to save, share or tag the item. You can also use the ‘Personalize’ option (in the left-hand column) to categorize your feeds. Managing your categories can be particularly helpful if you subscribe to a large number of feeds.
  • Add an extension to your browser to make subscribing to feeds even easier. Try this one for Chrome, this one for Firefox, and this one for Internet Explorer.

Blog post
Do you view RSS feeds as a useful tool in keeping up to date? Do you think you will use them in future? Tag your post ‘Thing 8’.

Thing 7 2013: Twitter

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What is Twitter?
Twitter is a micro-blogging service that allows you to publish short updates of up to 140 characters. You can follow other users to subscribe to their updates. All updates from users you follow appear in your own feed, so it’s easy to see them.

Why use Twitter?
It’s a common misconception that Twitter is ALL about people tweeting what they had for breakfast (or their latest date, or their sleeping habits, etc.). Although there are certainly (many!) people who only use Twitter for these things, the reality is that many users prefer to use it to ask questions, network or share relevant information and interesting links. It can be a powerful tool, both for building professional contacts and for staying up to date in your area. There are also many organisations and researchers using Twitter creatively to stay in touch with their students or contacts. You can use Twitter to tweet your work, ask questions, crowdsource data and reach new audiences, as well as to publicise events and news, get feedback and get/answer questions in the classroom. You might use Twitter for any of the following (via #DH23):

  • Publicising your work, such as a new blog post or article.
  • Disseminating news about your professional activities, such as attending a conference
  • Commenting on news in your field or HE in general
  • Sharing interesting context you find, through tweeting URLs (shortened with services such as tinyurl or bit.ly to leave you more characters to comment with) or through retweeting others’ tweets (marked RT to acknowledge that it’s not your original content, or MT if you change it slightly)
  • News updates (from blogs such as those of other 23 Things participants, InsideHigherEd or publications such as the THES or Guardian Higher Education),
  • Opportunities and news from professional or research bodies such as Vitae or the UK Research Staff Association or funding bodies such as the Research Councils UK or AHRC). These might include calls for papers, funding or jobs.
  • Activities in Departments, Libraries and other research centres. You can find out about seminars and conferences this way.
  • Livetweeting at conferences (either participating in the conference audience ‘backchannel’ or to get a flavour of discussions and speakers to look up, and participate remotely by asking questions, if you can’t attend in person)
  • Asking questions, and answering those of others.
  • Crowdsourcing and finding research collaborators or participants
  • Finding and contacting individual scholars in your field who might be able to recommend readings, answer questions or suggest opportunities that would be interesting for you.
  • Enhancing some of the more informal communication that occurs in the academic world such as networking at conferences and seminars, bumping into colleagues at your own and other institutions or moral support from peers.
  • Peer support
  • A bit of light relief: follow @PhDcomics

Some basic Twitter vocabulary
(see the Twitter Glossary for more)

Task
If you already have a Twitter account, skip ahead to Exploring Further. If not, follow these easy steps to get one set up.

  1. Go to http://twitter.com/ and use the sign up box to get started. Follow the steps to create an account (if you want more help, Twitter provides detailed step-by-step instructions). You may want to think about your online presence when you decide on a user name. Do you want to be consistent across your various accounts?
  2. Once you have created your account, you’ll be taken to your Twitter homepage where there are further steps to work through to get you started, e.g. updating your profile to include a short biography or adding a profile picture. You can come back to these steps at any time using the link to Settings in the top right corner of the screen. We recommend you leave the privacy box unchecked so that others can see your tweets and communicate with you.
    The Twitter profile page for the Bodleian Libraries.

    The Twitter profile page for the Bodleian Libraries.

  3. Now post your first update! Click on the status box on the top left where it says ‘Compose new Tweet…’. Write a comment – maybe something about your participation in 23 Things. As you type you will see the number in the top right of the box decrease; this tells you how many characters you have left. Leave enough space to add the hashtag #oxengage at the end. This is the hashtag for the Engage and 23 Things programmes and will allow others to search for all #oxengage tweets. Once you’re done, click ‘update’. You’ll see your tweet appear in your timeline.
  4. Find people to follow.
    1. Search by name or twitter handle in the search box. Try looking for and following @bodleianlibs and @ltgoxford.
    2. There’s also a follow button on every user’s profile page.

Exploring further

  • Twitter hashtags offer a great way of following conferences – either by finding out about and interacting with those at a conference with you, or by hearing details of a conference you were unable to attend. Take a look and see if a conference of interest to you has/had a hashtag, and then see what sort of tweets come up under that hashtag (keep in mind that Twitter may not show results before a certain date).
  • Another way to use hashtags is to set up real time chats – for instance, the Guardian Higher Education chats each Friday, or the #phdchats on Wednesdays. These are usually held at specific times each week or month, and you can participate by tweeting your comments or questions with the appropriate hashtag. Take a look at the tweets around last week’s Guardian HE chat (conveniently on academic blogging – search for #HElivechat) or #phdchat to get an idea. There’s an open Google doc that lists over 300 live chats and their dates/times; they cover all sorts of topics.
  • Use lists! Twitter allows you to make lists of other Twitter users, so you can categorize people in helpful ways. You can also follow other Twitter users’ lists. @ltgoxford has some great lists of people and departments in the University who are on Twitter
  • Set up and save searches for relevant topics, people or events in your field.
  • Take a look at a few Twitter clients. Tools like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite allow you to schedule tweets ahead of time and track retweets, reach and other stats.

Blog post
Think about Twitter and how you think it may or may not be relevant to you. Do you feel it’s useful? Why or why not? Tag your post ‘Thing 7’.

Further Reading:

Thinking strategically: Five things to do before you start using social media

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The third in our series of guest post comes from Liz McCarthy, who runs 23 Things for Research and is the Communications and Social Media Officer for the Bodleian Libraries.

A little strategy goes a long way

A little strategy goes a long way

When you’re just tweeting for yourself or using Facebook to post photos of friends and family, you don’t generally think about your goals or impact. But when you start to use social media and other digital tools professionally – particularly if you are using them on behalf of a project, a department or a university – a strategy becomes more and more important. Like marketing plans or business documents, social media strategies aren’t something we usually learn how to do in higher education. But they don’t have to be difficult; you just need to be able to sit down and think about your goals and how you will measure the impact of what you’re doing online.

So. A social media strategy in five  easy steps?

  1. Do your research. A bit of situational analysis can go a long way. Who is your audience? Students? Other researchers? The public? Media? What tools do they use? You’re probably trying to reach more than one type of group, but it helps to think about who you’re speaking to where and what kind of messages you want them to hear.
  2. Think about your objectives. Are you trying to get the word out about your research or a project? Get people to read a paper? Connect with your students or peers? Objectives need to be specific.
  3. Determine criteria for success. How will you know if you’re doing well? Can you measure how many people go to your article via social media? Maybe you can monitor how many times your students engage with blog posts? Is it important to reach as many people as possible, or to have them interact with you? Success means very different things to different people and different projects, and it’s not always about numbers.
  4. Choose your tools. Which tools and services can you use to accomplish your goals? We’re all busy, and it doesn’t make sense to use every social media tool on offer. Think about your situational analysis. Where are your audiences? If you’re trying to reach students, does it make sense to Tweet, or is a blog the best route? If you’re trying to generate article downloads, what works best? Ask around, do some reading, and experiment.
  5. Write it down. I’m pretty sure that many good social media users out there have thought about some of this already, even if they haven’t set it out on paper. That’s great. Now write it down, whether that means scrawling it on a piece of notepaper and taping it to your monitor or preparing a formal document. At the very least, a written plan will remind you of your goals and success measurement. Beyond that, however, it may be that you can use your strategy when talking to funders or thinking about REF.

These steps and your final strategy should be empowering, not restrictive. Producing a strategy can mean producing something as specific as the BBC’s excellent strategy document (which combines what some see as an ‘appropriate use policy’ with a wider strategy), or something that simply outlines an audience and a mission in a few bullet points. There are lots of examples online, from the simple to the exhaustive, and lots of tools to help you measure how your objectives are doing (Culture 24’s excellent Let’s Get Real action research is a good place to start, and you can take a look at the Evaluating Social Media Impact presentation I gave earlier this year). The key is that you’re thinking about why you’re doing what you’re doing, and you’re adapting and changing as your needs develop.

Thing 6 2013: Consider your personal brand

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Thing 6 2013: Consider your online presenceYour ‘personal brand’ is affected by online information and your online presence, whether you’re active online or not. The first thing many people (including potential and current employers!) will do when they hear your name is Google you, and it’s important to learn how to ‘curate’ that brand, which should be considered part of your professional identity. A good way to think about it is as an extension of the professional you. A strong online presence can be a powerful tool in achieving your professional goals, particularly in promoting your work and reaching a wider audience.

For Thing 6, we’ll be exploring a number of ways to manage and keep tabs on your digital footprint. You’ve already made a crucial step in setting up your blog! Some of these represent some basic tools that everyone should be familiar with. If you’re pretty comfortable with the basics, we’ll provide some additional options you may wish to explore.

Task:
We’ll begin by taking a look at what content is associated with your name online. Start by Googling yourself. Type your name into Google (and/or any other search engine) and see what comes up (you may also want to try nicknames – Liz vs Elizabeth, for example). Do the same thing over at socialmention, which gathers data from social media. Next try running your name through MIT’s Personas project (EDITOR’S UPDATE: the Personas tool seems to be broken at the moment, although it’s worth checking back as it’s a fun visual representation of your online presence), which is a great way to visualise the types of content associated with your name and clue you in to other people with the same name.

You may want to try combining your name with certain key words (e.g. ‘libraries’ or ‘neuroscience’), or even seeing if what comes up when you search for keywords only (e.g. ‘neuroscience researchers oxford’). Do you or your work appear on the first page or two? If so, is it content with which you’d like to see yourself associated?

Once you’ve analysed how you appear online, start to think about how you’d like to appear and what you might be able to do to make that happen. Quite a few of the tools we’ll explore in upcoming Things can improve and augment your online presence (having a LinkedIn profile, for example, is a great way to make sure you’re visible), but there are things you can do now:

Accounts
First of all, think about online accounts and profiles you already have. Do they come up when you search? Do you want them to? Make sure accounts you already manage are up to date and reflect the persona you want to share – including your name and photograph, if relevant. If you haven’t already, fill out the ‘About’ page on your new or existing blog, and consider adding a photograph. Try to be consistent across all platforms.

Professional vs Personal
Do you want to keep your professional and personal identities separate online? Many choose a middle ground and let their personality shine through their professional presence. Keep in mind that if content is accessible to colleagues and professional contacts, you probably don’t want your latest holiday snaps or student party photos showing (although this may be fine for some people/accounts). You may also want to consider whether anonymity does or does not fit in with your professional goals.

Blog post:

  • How easy were you to find online? Were you happy with what you found? What sort of ‘person’ emerged, and what might other people think about him or her? What did you, or might you, do to address this?
  • How important do you think it is to maintain a professional presence online?
  • Tag your blog post ‘Thing 6’.

Exploring further
If you feel you already have a handle on your online presence, or if you’d like to take what you’ve just done a little bit further, there’s always more you can do to ‘curate’ your online brand.

  • Consider linking. If you have multiple online accounts, find ways to connect them. If you have accounts on social media tools like Twitter or LinkedIn, you may want to provide links to them on your blog (see this WordPress help article if you want info on creating links). Google favours pages on .ac.uk domains, so include a link to your University profile or page (if applicable) from your other accounts.
  • Try setting up a Google alert for your name, or perhaps your name with a keyword or two. Go to http://www.google.com/alerts and choose your search terms, how often you’d like to receive alerts, and where you’d like to receive them.

Further reading

Wikipedia: Learning by sharing knowledge

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The second in our series of guest posts come from Jisc Wikimedian Ambassador Martin Poulter, who takes a look at why using Wikipedia in education is important.

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Librarians collaborated with Wikipedians old and new to improve articles related to Multnomah County, Oregon.

Billions of people around the world crave education, but lack the resources we take for granted. Adequate libraries and current textbooks are out of their reach, but they are increasingly getting internet access. Meanwhile, every day in universities and schools, talented students are writing essays, then handing them in to be read by a tutor who already knows the topic, to be marked and eventually thrown away. If only that student work could be put into a free, multilingual, knowledge-sharing space.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, is part of a charitable project to give everyone on the planet free access to the sum of all human knowledge. This takes enormous effort from tens of thousands of volunteer editors, and after thirteen years it is still very much a work in progress. In many areas, Wikipedia has a real need for decent, well-written content.

In writing an online encyclopedia, the Wikipedia community needs people to:

  • choose and evaluate sources
  • represent sources with the right amount of relative weight;
  • structure information clearly to convey what is known about that topic;
  • write neutrally without bringing in subjective interpretations and opinions;
  • write in an original way to avoid plagiarism;
  • write accessibly for the widest audience;
  • check grammar and wording;
  • illustrate by finding, creating, or adapting images;
  • review articles against quality criteria;
  • and to discuss and justify these choices with people who may have a different perspective.

So there are research, textual, social and even legal skills involved in being a Wikipedian. Users do not need all these skills from the outset, but can start small and develop them by interacting with the community.

These look very like the skills that we try to develop and sharpen in degree-level education. That is why, in education systems around the world, hundreds of academics have set their students to improve, critique, translate, or illustrate Wikipedia articles. Articles such as Dictator novel, Implicit self-esteem and Nuclear energy policy in the United States have become rich and informative through student involvement.

Writing for the world, rather than just for one’s tutor, is potentially very motivating. It also risks ‘stage fright’. The course and assessment need to be structured to ensure learners are comfortable with Wikipedia’s norms and prepared to make the right sort of contributions.

Many lecturers and teachers are still suspicious of Wikipedia and (in vain) tell students to avoid it altogether. They see it purely as a reference resource. Seeing it as an educational process or as a knowledge-sharing community gives a different perspective: A poor Wikipedia article offers an opportunity to create active – and in some cases extremely rewarding – experiences for learners, while improving the world’s access to free educational material.

The US-based Wikimedia Foundation  has some case studies from educators and here in the UK there is an index of education projects that may provide inspiration and guidance.

Martin Poulter, based at the University of Bristol, is the Jisc Wikimedia Ambassador (funded by Jisc and Wikimedia UK) from July 2013 to March 2014. He edits on Wikipedia as User:MartinPoulter.

 

Thing 5 2013: Explore other blogs and get to know some of the other participants

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Kazimierz Nowak, Explorer

Explorer Kazimierz Nowak in the jungle

One of the best parts about a 23 Things programme is the ability to interact with and draw on the expertise and learning of a community of participants. Over the course of the week, we’ll be adding to the participants’ blog list in the sidebar. Take some time to look at other blogs and read about what other community members hope to get from 23 Things. Feel free to comment on others’ posts.

We encourage you to keep checking other blogs as the programme continues. Seeing what others are doing can often help answer your own questions and can offer inspiration for your own work!

Thing 4 2013: Register your blog with the 23 Things team

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Now that you have your new blog, you can officially register for the 23 Things programme. You can do this by filling out our online registration form with your name, blog URL and department. We will add your blog to the list in the sidebar of this blog, and you will then officially be registered. If you already signed up but didn’t have a blog, you can either sign up again (we’ll cross check!) or leave your name and blog address in the comments on the Sign Up page.

Participants who register their blogs and complete all the Things will receive a completion certificate when they finish the 23 Things programme.

Dabbling in Social Media: Starting small

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38904ca7-attr-1600x1342A guest post from Abigail G Scheg, Assistant Professor of English at Elizabeth City State University

Although there are already a number of instructors across disciplines and institutions using social media in their classrooms, there are also a number who shy away from these technologies. Some instructors are hesitant because they do not have social media accounts and do not feel that they have the time to commit to it now. Others are wary of student interest and engagement and worry that if students are permitted to use social media accounts, they will lose focus on their coursework.

Generally, the term social media is linked to individual use of certain websites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Pinterest. Social media actually refers to any type of writing that has large social engagement, and this includes blogs and wikis. Along with targeted use of Facebook etc., blogs and wikis afford the opportunity for many people to engage, interact and respond.

While Twitter is my favorite social media tool to use in my classrooms, Twitter is a big step for a hesitant instructor. My suggestion is to take small steps with a blog:

  1. Start by investigating the social tools that your LMS (learning management system) offers. In Oxford, that means WebLearn, but for other universities that could be Blackboard or a variety of other tools. Many of these tools have blog, forum and wiki capabilities.
  2. Investigate any WebLearn training (or training for your LMS if you’re outside Oxford) and ask for help (virtual or face-to-face).banner_inst
  3. Begin with one blog assignment such as an introductory forum. Have students introduce themselves at the beginning of the semester and share some information about their lives or interest in the course. Require that the students respond to one another.
  4. Try to engage as well. Comment on a few students’ posts to see if they respond or how they react.
  5. Evaluate the workflow and outcomes of this small implementation. Did it go well? Did you feel unprepared? Did you (dis)like the concept of blogs or wikis, but (dis)like the setup of this particular one?

Once you make a small step, you will feel more comfortable taking additional steps. If this initial blog is successful, then you could require blog posts as a weekly assignment. Or you could move outside WebLearn or your LMS to a blog website like Blogger or WordPress (see Thing 2: Setting up a blog, for help).

Eventually, you could venture into more experimental social media websites such as Twitter. Always take time to familiarise yourself with a new technology before implementing it in the classroom. Allow yourself a time to learn the etiquette and capabilities of a social media website in case your students have questions. You will find a tool that works for you, the students, and your specific discipline. Before you know it, you’ll will be a social media expert!

Dr Abigail G Scheg is an Assistant Professor of English at Elizabeth City State University in the department of Language, Literature, and Communication (LLC). She researches and publishes in the areas of online pedagogy, social media, first-year composition, and popular culture. On the off chance she is not working, Dr. Scheg can be found enjoying time with her husband, family, friends, or traveling.

Thing 3 2013: Write a blog post about social media

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Before we talk about what to write on your blog, let’s talk about why to write. If you already have your own blog and are a confident blogger, feel free to jump down to the the ‘what to write for Thing 3’ section of this post.

Why blog?
People blog because they want to share something. For some people, that ‘something’ is cats or holiday pictures, but blogging can be a great development tool for sharing research and professional insights. It’s a great way to incorporate reflective practice into your work, and it also helps you share your work with others, making professional contacts and extending your online network and presence.

Before you start, it may be helpful to think about what kind of things you want to share and what kind of blogger you want to be. Do you want to share research? Connect with those in your field? Increase your online presence? Develop an online presence for a project? Simply reflect upon your 23 Things experience? The answer to these questions will help determine the tone you take and what kinds of things you want to share on your blog.

What to write for Thing 3
For your first 23 Things blog post, we’d like you to write a short piece about your experiences with social media and what you hope to get out of the 23 Things for Research and the Engage: Social Media Michaelmas programme. If you’re new to social media, do you have any ideas about how it might help or affect your work? If you’re using it already, what do you use? What are you hoping to explore?

Note: Please ‘tag’ or ‘label’ this post ‘Thing 3’ so that others can easily follow your progress and find specific posts. For each post you make in the 23 Things programme, please make sure to label or tag it ‘Thing [?]’ for the number of the Thing it relates to. You’re welcome to add other tags if you would like to. If you’d like guidance on tags and labels, there are instructions online for Blogger or WordPress. If you are using another service, have a quick Google or feel free to ask the 23 Things team.