Twitter | doug woods

Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

Education Technology; Teaching Tool or Learning Tool?

Monday, April 2nd, 2012

: Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday, I read this great short blog post from @kylepace entitled Good Vs Great Teachers. In the article, Kyle criticises another author who appeared to believe that educational technology was a waste of time because it would never replace good teachers. All in all I would agree very much with Kyle’s response, which is basically that good teachers embrace the technology and what it offers, to become Great teachers.

I posted a tweet on Twitter, inviting my followers to take a look at the article but I also posed the question, does the article still look upon education technology as a teaching tool rather than a learning tool? The purpose of this post on my blog is to attempt to explain what I meant by that.

We’ve had computers in schools for around 30 years now. I’m still surprised when I encounter a colleague who still questions whether we should have computers in schools. I remind them just how long they have been around in education and, if I’m feeling particularly narked, I ask what my colleague has been doing all this time? (I wonder why I have no friends!)

As I say, we’ve had computers for around 30 years and, in that time, the nature of the technology and its uses have changed considerably. No longer is a computer a device which only one, or possibly two, people could use at a time when sat at a monitor screen. Nowadays, we can project computer images to large groups and classes via interactive whiteboards. The computer in the classroom is no longer the sole preserve of the teacher, who says who can use it and when. Now each pupil can have their own computer, on a desk, on their lap or in their pocket.

Originally, pupils could engage in the learning software that their teacher presented to them. Nowadays, pupils can locate their own resources and share them with peers. They can use computers to collaborate on projects and other learning work. They can create their own materials and display or broadcast them to an audience. Their audience, or their peer group, is no longer confined to the members of their own school, year or class group, that audience is now to be found beyond school or even national boundaries.

What is echoing in my mind, are the words I first heard from John Davitt, “we need to move learners from being passive consumers of technology into becoming creative users of that technology” . I feel that this shift has been happening over the years and needs to continue to progress. The technology is no longer just a tool for the teacher, it is no a tool for the learner.

I sometimes find myself saying to teachers, particularly those who have some reticence or lack confidence in using ICT, that it does not matter so much how you use technology, what matters most is how you allow and enable your learners to use technology.

So, for me, educational technology is a tool more for the learner than the teacher. That is not to deny the role that technology has in supporting the teacher in their work and in their approaches to learning but that it is the use of technology by the learner that is key to the future of education.

For me, a good teacher is one who uses technology in their work ( see my article elsewhere on good teachers and technology), a great teacher is one who extends that to encourage, support and develop their learners’ use of technology in their learning.

Technology Everywhere (slideshare.net)
Action plan for integration of technology (slideshare.net)
Students as Creators of Multimedia Instruction (boisebarbara.org)
SWGFL ICT Conferences – Torquay & Bristol (dougdickinson.co.uk)
Does ICT Improve Learning? (ictineducation.org)
New Technology and Outdoor Learning: Introduction (olliebray.typepad.com)
Outfitting 21st Century Classrooms with 21st Century Teachers (isteconnects.org)

Education Technology; Teaching Tool or Learning Tool?

Possibly Related Posts:

Tags: Author, Education, Information and communication technologies in education, Interactive whiteboard, K through 12, Learning, Technology, Twitter
Posted in Classroom Technology, Transforming Learning | 2 Comments »

Flipping Textbooks

Monday, January 30th, 2012

: Image by Amin Tabrizi via Flickr

The other day, I got quite depressed by watching a discussion on Twitter about textbooks. Not, you will notice, ebooks or even etextbooks but good old fashioned hardbacked or paperbacked textbooks; the sort we used to use when I was at school (and I’m talking about as a pupil not as a teacher). Does education find it really hard to let go of the past or does it just go around in cycles?

Even though I didn’t agree with almost anything I saw on that discussion, it did make me think about textbooks and the relative advantages and disadvantages of them.

Information

There is usually much more information in a textbook than on, say, a website. This is a big advantage in favour of textbooks. At one time it was claimed that CD roms would replace textbooks, but CDs and even DVDs just never seemed to hold as much information upon a topic as did the average textbook. Sure, the CD or DVD had the advantage that it could contain animation, video, photographs and interactive quizzes, all of which might be more difficult, if not impossible, in a textbook but in terms of actual amount of information, the textbook wins.

A disadvantage of the textbook is that it could soon go out of date or become inaccurate as things changed, whereas a website could be easily changed to keep it up to date and relevant.

Relevance and Appropriateness

One of the good things about textbooks is that you could have a textbook written on a subject for young pupils, have another textbook written on the same subject for older pupils and others written for adult learners. You rarely seem to find this, though, for websites or CD roms, though there are some for young pupils, most websites appear to be aimed at an almost ‘ageless’ audience. You used also to get textbooks that progressed in series with the learners; so you’d have book 1, book 2, or book 3 or beginner, intermediate, advanced … you rarely seem to get such progression in digital media.

Critical Thinking

Perhaps the biggest disadvantage of a textbook is that a class or school often only use one, so it had only one source of information which was also presented in only one way. By using the web, a school could have access to several different sources which could present different viewpoints on the same topic. The web could therefore better allow for the development of critical thinking in the learner whereas in the days of textbooks, the learner just assumed the textbook was correct and presented the only view. However, this critical thinking could only go so far because websites and other digital media rarely present as much information, upon which to be critical, as textbooks.

Engaging

This is a tricky one as I’m sure we can all think back to any textbooks we used to learn in school and I daresay ‘engaging’ is not a term we would immediately apply to them. TV looks much more engaging, CDroms look much more engaging, the web looks much more engaging, .. at least they did when they first came out, do these media still look as engaging as they once did?

So it seems that textbooks had some advantages over modern digital media but also some drawbacks. So should they be used or barred in 21^st century learning?

Why Can’t Textbooks Be Free? (forbes.com)
Borders Launches Online Textbook Marketplace (webpronews.com)
Textbook Sales (shalampax.com)
Are all textbooks created equal? (computinged.wordpress.com)
Free textbooks from Curriki (teleread.com)

Possibly Related Posts:

Tags: Education, textbooks, Twitter
Posted in Classroom Technology | 2 Comments »

How much does Twitter Cost?

Monday, October 17th, 2011

It does frustrate me when I see headlines such as this in the Daily Telegraph http://bit.ly/1lDI7B and then I go on to read how much tools like Twitter or Facebook cost in terms of wasted time.

I use Twitter a lot, and Facebook less so. I mainly use it in conjunction with my work in ICT and education (though I have also been known to tweet about my eclectic musical tastes and my love of Liverpool FC, when they win). A great deal of my use is to enable me to keep a contact with others working in the same or allied fields. In this way, Twitter helps me keep up with some of the latest developments, events and news within my chosen field of work. Sometimes, Twitter keeps me informed before more traditional sources such as TV, newspapers or email. If I have a problem or a question, I can tweet it on Twitter and often get a response from my network of contacts. Similarly, if one of the people I follow tweets a question, I can respond quickly and simply.

So you can see how I tend to use Twitter almost as a training tool as part of my ongoing personal CPD. As such, I would estimate that it is certainly a lot quicker and a lot less expensive than attending an In-Service training course. Yet articles such as we seen in the newspapers do not give any mention of how much these tools save in formal training costs.

Now I’m not saying that Twitter should or could replace formal or professional training but for giving a ‘heads up’ and for keeping me abreast of many latest developments, it appears invaluable. I am sure that many of us use Twitter and other tools in ways that support our work and yet never get a mention.

Possibly Related Posts:

Tags: Twitter
Posted in Training INSET and CPD | 2 Comments »

Why Tweet at Conferences

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

One of the best uses of Twitter that I’ve found is the ability to use it at conferences.

I have done this a few times and, I admit, made a few mistakes. So, I thought I’d share my views as to why it is a good thing and, hopefully, invite others to comment.

First of all, let me say that I do NOT think it is rude to tweet during a speaker’s presentation. In fact, I think many speakers expect it nowadays and also welcome it. After all, the speaker gets their message across a bit wider via your tweets; it is good publicity for them. Event organisers also seem to benefit from it as it publicises their event and future events; which is surely worth the cost of laying on free wifi at a venue.

I do feel, though, that the tweeter needs to be sensitive and if the speaker is presenting commercially sensitive or confidential information or if they simply ask not to be tweeted, then this should be observed and respected.

One of the frustrating aspects of conference or event tweeting is that a tweet will often contain just ‘so-and-so speaker at this event’. While it is nice to know who’s speaking, it is more useful for the follower to know what the speaker is speaking about, what they are saying (if just brief highlights), and the tweeter’s opinion or response to what is being said.

That last point is a bit controversial and I’ll come back to it later.

What I prefer to do, and I enjoy others doing it too, is being told in tweets the key points in a speaker’s presentation. As a follower, it does not give me the same experience as being actually present at the conference but it does allow me to have some insight into the content, argument or viewpoint being presented. This is far more useful than just being told that ‘mr so-and-so is speaking’ or ‘great speech by …’ or ‘inspirational speech by..’, unless that is genuinely the tweeter’s response to the speech.

As a tweeter, giving your opinion or reaction to a speaker’s presentation can be tricky. I think the key here is to respect the speaker and, if you want to give responses, respond to the argument or points presented rather than be personal. I think it is also important to remember that the speaker probably doesn’t have the capacity to respond to your tweets, at least not in real time, so your tweets could become a one-sided argument. That leads on to another point, I think it is best to avoid getting into an argument on twitter during a conference, there are always many points of view and expressing them is fine but any follower really wants to know what the conference speaker is saying … the debate can wait ’til later.

Anyone who has been to conferences will know that there will be times when delegates split into breakaway groups for different ‘seminars’ or whatever. Sometimes, I have found it is not always easy to choose which seminar to attend; often there may be two or more I’d be interested in but I have to select one. In such cases, it is great when someone else tweets from another seminar, that way, delegates can have a taste of what is being presented at each seminar.

One of the biggest snags in conference tweeting is the use of a hashtag; you would think this would be the simplest of problems to solve but often you see different people using different hashtags for the same event. This only causes confusion for a follower and it would be best if a common hashtag could be agreed. As a follower, I have sometimes asked tweeters to use a common hashtag and told them of the hashtags being used by others. If you are tweeting under one hashtag, you may not be aware of ones being used by others, so it can be useful if someone following, joins in and lets you know. Ideally, I suppose, a hashtag could be agreed in advance of the conference and I do often see tweeters asking what the hashtag is when on their journey to an event. In many cases, the conference organisers could set out the hashtag beforehand. There should be a general rule that hashtags should be as short as possible (so as not to use up too many characters) and as distinct as possible (so as not to be confused with other events).

There is also the issue of twitter being used as a backchannel, giving the speaker feedback on their presentation. Generally, I would say this is a good idea and adds another dimension to a presentation. However, where Twitter is used in this way, I believe the speaker should at least know about it and agree to it, ideally the speaker should incorporate it into their presentation. However, we have to remember that when presenting it is not always possible for a speaker to stay aware of a twitter stream or to respond in real time.

There is one final point, or gripe, that I have seen time and time again at conferences from other people tweeting. At the start of a conference, people will say tweet that they are at the event and they’ll be tweeting this or that … but then it all goes quiet. There are a number of times when I have followed conference tweets during the morning but then there’s been nothing during the afternoon. This can be really frustrating for followers, so if you do tweet at a conference, please keep tweeting (battery and wifi permitting of course) during the whole event!

In conclusion, I feel that tweeting from conferences and events can be one of the most beneficial uses of the social media tool. It is generally good to share ideas and experiences, which is why I tend to do tweet from conferences I attend. Followers need more info in your tweets than just the fact that you’re present or that so-and-so is about to speak, which is why I feel it is good to include key points or witty sayings from a speaker’s presentation. It is great to follow tweets from an event you cannot attend but please, please, please keep tweeting through the whole event!

Okay, that’s what I think about tweeting from conferences, I wonder what others think. Please leave a comment.

Update: While reading Bill’s comment below, a new use of twitter at a conference came into my mind. It’s not a use I have made and Bill doesn’t specifically mention it but, as I thought about it, it seemed a very valid and worthwhile use of twitter.

I am sure that many of us would agree that attending conferences can be good Professional Development. That’s great for those of us lucky enough to attend but what about our colleagues back at school or the office, couldn’t (shouldn’t?) they also be able to benefit from the conference for their own CPD? Of course they should and it would be great if they could all attend but, as we all know, that would be problematic, cost money and leave the school understaffed or with temporary staff.

I think you can see what I’m getting at … by tweeting from the conference, the tweeter can actually share elements of the CPD with colleagues. Not only that but Twitter is a two-way tool, so the colleagues can also interact with the Tweeter by asking questions of them or getting them to ask questions of the speaker etc..

Now, I know it is not perfect CPD but I might suggest it may be a bit better than the usual cascade approach where the attendee feedsback to colleagues upon return, relying upon any notes, handouts and memory but only being able to answer questions based upon their own interpretation of the presentation. I’ve never been a real fan of the cascade approach, finding it akin to ‘Chinese whispers’ where the message of the session gets slightly changed each time it is relayed. By using Twitter, however, the remote ‘attendees’ get a slightly better taste of the presentation/message.

Ten Twitter Tips for Teachers (whiteboardblog.co.uk)
#Hashtag That (isupportdigitalmag.wordpress.com)
We who are about to tweet: @daniel_bailey. (wewhoareabouttodie.com)
How to Use Twitter Hashtags (lockergnome.com)
Tips for being social at conferences (nevillehobson.com)
It’s All About the Hash (crossroadsconsultingllc.wordpress.com)
9 Tips for Building a Great Twitter Hashtag (lovestats.wordpress.com)
Micro-blogging in a mother tongue (news.bbc.co.uk)
The Secret World of Twitter Users – Are You Missing Out? (debbiekenny.wordpress.com)
Tweet-able Conference Talks (inklingmarkets.com)
How to: Auto-tweet during your keynote (thenextweb.com)
5 Steps to Planning an Awesome Event With Inbound Marketing (hubspot.com)
10 Tips to Live Blog a Conference (lovestats.wordpress.com)

Possibly Related Posts:

Tags: @hashtags, conferences, hashtag, Online Communities, Social network, Twitter
Posted in education | 7 Comments »

Four Twitter Services You May Not have Seen

Sunday, December 26th, 2010

: Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Just recently I have been playing around with a few twitter services which some of you may not have seen. Most of them are quite new services and I thought it was time to give you my first impressions of them.

TwitterTim.es and Paper.li

Two of the services are quite similar. They take the tweets of you and your followers and present them as a ‘twitter’ type newspaper. I have been using Paper.li for a while and have tweeted it a few times in my twitter stream. Twittertim.es is one I have only recently begun using and have not yet tweeted it. The reason I have not yet tweeted Twittertim.es is that they do not let me know when a new story is published, whereas Paper.li sends me an email.

Of the two services, Paper.li looks the more innovative and more appealing on screen. I like its inclusion of photos, videos and text pieces. It is published only once a day and, as I mentioned before, they send me an email when each new edition is published. Generally the service has been very good and I have been pleasantly surprised at the relevancy of most of the items they publish. There have been a few slip ups, they did publish an article about the film Avatar, in which I have absolutely no interest whatsoever and I wouldn’t like anyone reading my paper to think I had. Okay, this is a trivial thing and one that I can put down to early trial glitches.

Twittertim.es appears a bit more traditional in its on-screen appearance. There does, though, appear to be more stories in it and, again, they are usually very relevant to my interests. The newspaper seems to be updated more frequently than paper.li but they don’t let me know when a new item appears, though they do have an rss feed. So I have to past that into a reader if I want to know when a new item is published.

While both these services are interesting, I’m not really sure who they are aimed at. Are they aimed at me, so that I can read in depth more about the stories or news items that I and my followers have visited or are they aimed at my followers? In some way, at the present, they seem to be a solution in search of a problem.

Newzfor.me

At first I thought newzfor.me was going to be a similar service but which worked in a slightly different way. On its website it presents a number of categories and in each category it has a number of news stories which it will publish into your twitter stream at regular intervals (you can choose what interval). What you do is to simply choose which category you want to publish and the service does the rest, it even automatically shortens the url using your bit.ly service. It seemed like a good idea and I signed up to give it a try.

That was my first mistake. I chose the technology category as that seemed to be the closest to the educational technology that I usually tweet about, that was my second mistake. I set the tweet interval to be once every two hours which, I thought, seemed reasonable; third mistake. Finally, I linked the service to my bit.ly account,.. you guessed it!

For a few days, every couple of hours, my twitter stream was punctuated with tweets about some breaking technology story. All seemed okay at first but soon the items seemed to have less relevance to education technology and it seemed more like I was spamming my own stream. I also found that an interval of every two hours was far too frequent and again made it look more like spam. I could have changed the category of the items but no other category (and there weren’t many) seemed at all relevant.

So I decided to end the service but on returning to their homepage I found there was no way to login to my account to delete or cancel it. So I took the step of denying the service access to my twitter stream, that at least stopped the tweets appearing. However, the posts were still appearing in my bit.ly account, with a new one every two hours! I had to send an email to the newfor.me team to try to find out how to stop the account. It turned out that I couldn’t, they could only do it, for now, at their end. That meant letting them know my twitter ID, which I was a bit reluctant to do. Eventually, they did remove my account and the posts no longer appear in my twitter stream or my bit.ly account.

So the newzfor.me experience turned out to be a bit of a disaster but it needn’t have been. If there had been a user-panel on the home page which gave me full control of the service, I could have made any changes including cancelling at any time. Yet, I think the service would have been made better had they opted, instead of automatically tweeting articles on my behalf, to send me a link to an article and then let me decide whether to tweet it or not.

Reportage

The fourth service is one I have been using for a while now. It is not a web service but an iphone app but I really wish there was a web service as well! The app is called reportage and it is a twitter client that works in a slightly different way. It automatically groups tweets by twitter ID. So when I select the app, it first shows me the avatar of every person I follow (and that takes quite a while to load now). By selecting an avatar, I can then read every tweet made by that person over a recent timespan, say 1 day. This is great, especially if I have been away or busy during the day; it means that I can easily catch up with what people have been saying/doing. Another feature is that certain people I follow I can mark out as special and these people will be displayed on a separate screen, which makes it a bit easier to catch up with tweets from people I feel are important or influential.

How Many Times Should You Tweet Your Blog Post? (bothsidesofthetable.com)
Who’s Tweeting in Your Backyard? (twitterrati.com)
Two tools you should be using (lostremote.com)
Paper.li Lets You Read Your Twitter Stream like News (appscout.com)
TwitBlend – blending conversations on Twitter (twi5.com)
5 genuinely useful Twitter tools. (dougbelshaw.com)

Four Twitter Services You May Not have Seen

Possibly Related Posts:

Tags: Twitter, web 2.0
Posted in web 2.0 | 2 Comments »

If You Can Google it

Sunday, October 10th, 2010

One of the people I follow on Twitter sent the following tweet;

“If you can google it, it shouldn’t be on a test.”

To which I simply replied;

“Nonsense”

What made me say that, apart from being in a bit of a grumpy mood that day?

Education is not about the learner cramming their head with facts, figures and information which they then regurgitate in a test or exam. That is a feature which marred the schooling of many during the latter years of the last century. There is far too much knowledge out there for it to fit meaningfully into a young adult’s brain.

As a middle-aged adult, I know that much of the ‘stuff’ we were taught in school has never been used, or hardly ever used, since. So what was the purpose of the teacher spending time teaching it? Surely that time could have been better spent teaching something else? It seems the only purpose for teaching some things was so that we could reiterate it in a test or examination.

21^st Century learning, if I may use such a grandiose and overused phrase, is not about cramming a learner with facts and figures; 21^st century learning is about using tools to find the answers or information you need. I will say now that those tools are not just technological tools; face-to-face meetings, conversations, dialogue, debates etc., are all included but the technological tools provide a modern and versatile way of accessing and using the information. One of the key technological tools is, of course, the internet search engine, such as Google.

It often appears that while learning in the 21^st century is changing, our methods of assessment are changing only very slowly. Our assessments still seem to be dominated by tests and exams that are still wedged in old 20^th century methods. Indeed, it might even be argued that education as a whole has been held back in its development by the need to produce good SAT and examination results.

So why did I object to the tweet? I did so because it seems to me that the message is basically saying that learners should not use an internet search engine to help them find their answer to a problem. I also object because it seems to represent an old view of testing.

Obviously, the tweet was presented without any context and this is often a problem with Twitter. The same tweet could be interpreted differently by other people. I do apologise to the person who made the original statement if there has been any misunderstanding on my part.

(image by dullhunk)

Google Squared: A Complete Guide (tbarrett.edublogs.org)
Who are you and where do you come from? (dougbelshaw.com)
3 ways Google Wave could be used in the classroom. (dougbelshaw.com)
Search Engines becoming part of our Learning Process

Possibly Related Posts:

Tags: Education, google, Google Inc., internet search engine, key technological tools, Tweet, Twitter, Twitter Inc
Posted in Classroom Technology, Transforming Learning | No Comments »

Paper.Li

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

I first mentioned Paper.li in an earlier post http://dougwoods.co.uk/blog/four-twitter-services-you-may-not-have-seen/ where it was one of a few new twitter services I was trying out. Since that time, Paper.li has grown and developed further. However, as from today I have decided to stop tweeting about new editions of my paper.li newspaper.

Essentially, paper.li is an online newspaper created from twitter tweets. You can select to create a daily paper from tweets by the people you follow, by a twitter list or by a hashtag. Each day a ‘newspaper’ will be created based upon the criteria you have chosen. Please note, though, that you do not have any control of the content other than initially choosing the criteria nor can you select the time or frequency of publication. These are two factors which I felt were a limitation on the service.

The tweets selected will appear in a daily website ‘newspaper’ which looks very good. Indeed it is the look of the resulting page that first attracts users. In appearance it appears much more interesting than similar services such as twitter times. The newspaper will contain articles, adverts, videos and images, the amount and content of which will depend upon the number of your followers or twitters using a given hashtag.

It is important to note, though, that the articles are not written by the people who tweet them, they are often written by someone else but are associated with the people who tweeted about them or linked to them in a tweet. This has caused some confusion with people emailing or messaging me to say that they did not write the article that was associated with them.

Initially I created just one newspaper based upon the tweets of the people I follow. This was very useful and created a very interesting newspaper, mainly because I follow quite a number of people and so the content changed regularly. I also created a newspaper based upon one of my created lists, this too was interesting but as the list had fewer people it had less content each day. More recently I created a few newspapers based upon hashtags, generally these have been less successful and the amount of content has varied depending upon the popularity of the various hashtags.

What, you might ask, were the reasons for creating these ‘newspapers’? Firstly, I wanted to see if they were of any use and, yes, I was seduced by the look of them. Secondly, I felt that they would be useful to catch up on tweets I may have missed during the day. Thirdly, I wanted to see if there could be any educational use for them.

My reason for creating newspapers based upon hashtags is that, initially, I thought these could be the most interesting and the more useful in education. My first hashtag newspaper was created to follow the #ukedchat discussions on a Thursday evening. I felt that this would be a useful way to present all the tweets that happen in what is often a very rushed hour of discussion and exchange of tweets. I realised that the paper would come out each day but that only the Thursday or Friday editions would reflect the week’s discussion hour. However, it was not as good as I had hoped. Although many people were taking part in the ukedchat discussions, they were only picked up by paper.li if they had links to websites, videos or photos; general tweets using the #ukedchat hashtag were usually overlooked.

I wanted to try to create a paper.li newspaper which might be of use in a classroom, for this I created a ‘newspaper’ based on the #flood hashtag. This was at the time of the Pakistan floods, though it would also pick up other floods if the #flood hashtag was used. I felt that this was a worldwide event which would be worthy of use in a classroom on geography or current affairs and might be a way of introducing twitter into lessons.

Fairly recently, Paper.li introduced the facility to automatically tweet when new editions of your newspapers were made available. I took advantage of this and used it to tweet whenever a new edition of each newspaper became available. The effect of this was in part to publicise further the tool being offered by paper.li and I am aware that many people signed up for the service as a result of my autotweets. It also led to an increase in the number of people following me. However, it also meant that my twitter stream became populated with more autotweets; something which annoys many people.

I am still using the paper.li service but I have decided to switch off, for now, the autotweets. There are a number of limitations in the service which make me question its current usefulness, though I do accept that it is still in alpha stage so may address these issues later on its development. Firstly, I became frustrated that some newspapers contained far more content than others, I guess this is understandable but regrettable, it might be overcome, though, if the user could select the frequency of each publication; say, daily, weekly or monthly so that only those with a lot of regular content could be published daily but others could accumulate content for weekly or monthly publication.

I have already mentioned that, apart from selecting the criteria for the content, the user has no control over what appears in their ‘newspaper’. This was a concern for me, especially on the very few occasions when I found disagreeable content being presented or adverts for something I don’t like being displayed. It would be nice if the user had the option to remove any content they did not like before publication.

However, this really raises the question, who is each newspaper for? Who is/are the target audience? is it the creator, is it the followers of the creator or is it someone else? I think you can make a case for each but without the creator having some control over content and publication schedule, it is difficult to use it effectively with users other than the creator themselves.

Another feature I would very much like to see is the ability to archive issues. At the present each new issue replaces previous issues, so links only direct the user to the current issue and previous issues are lost. This is a shame as I feel that an archive of past issues could be of great use, particularly in an educational setting.

So in conclusion I would say that the paper.li service is a very interesting one and one which has lots of potential. It is still in alpha stage of development and really needs to add new features to increase its usefulness. I know that part of the idea is that it is an automated service but I really would like to see greater control of content by the users. I’d also like to be able to determine the frequency of publication and have the ability to archive issues. If these features could be introduced, I’d recommend anyone to have a look at the service and explore its potential further.

My newspapers are still online, changed daily and available for anyone to see, even though I have turned off the autotweet function.

http://paper.li/deerwood

http://paper.li/deerwood/edtech

http://paper.li/#ukedchat

http://paper.li/#flood

How to make your Paper.li newspaper rock #paper.li (holykaw.alltop.com)
Can’t blog? Create a digital newspaper with paper.li (accmanpro.com)
Connect your community with a Twitter daily newspaper (nevillehobson.com)
Read Your Twitter As a Daily Newspaper – Paper.li (shankrila.com)
All you ever wanted to know about a papers’s optional promotion tweets (paper.li)
Solving filter failure: Twitter daily newspaper (heidi-miller.com)
Let a Thousand Personalized Newspapers Bloom (gigaom.com)
Paper.li Lets You Read Your Twitter Stream like News (appscout.com)
Paper.li lets your friends give you the news (blogs.chron.com)
Make your twitter-feed a newspaper with Paper.li (adland.tv)
Flipboard and Paper.li: Social news curation hits the tipping point (rossdawsonblog.com)

Possibly Related Posts:

Tags: Newspaper, Online newspaper, SmallRivers, Twitter
Posted in Online Resources | 2 Comments »

Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

Education Technology; Teaching Tool or Learning Tool?

Flipping Textbooks

How much does Twitter Cost?

Four Twitter Services You May Not have Seen

If You Can Google it

Paper.Li

Contact me

Follow us on Twitter

Doug Woods

Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

Education Technology; Teaching Tool or Learning Tool?

Related articles by Zemanta

Flipping Textbooks

Related articles by Zemanta

How much does Twitter Cost?

Why Tweet at Conferences

Related articles

Four Twitter Services You May Not have Seen

Related articles by Zemanta

If You Can Google it

Related articles by Zemanta

Paper.Li

Related articles by Zemanta

Contact me

Follow us on Twitter

Doug Woods