A colleague sent me these graphics this morning; I see they have been doing the rounds via Twitpic this week. They cleverly highlight the key differences between the traditional education most of us would have experienced and the kind of education children growing up in our digital world are experiencing now.
It got me wondering … what will these graphics look like in ten years’ time? Five? Or even next year?
Yesterday, I was marking a student’s assessment about the use of online tools to support e-learning. She was discussing the merits of social bookmarking and in particular delicious. Now, this is a topic dear to my heart. I have had a delicious account since 2004 and used it extensively over the years to access my favourite websites anywhere I had internet access. In recent times, I switched to Diigo and love the additional functionality it offers.
I followed the link to this particular student’s delicious account and noticed a few changes in the interface. Tags have now morphed into stacks, something which I’m not entirely convinced about and think bears more than a passing resemblance to Pinterest. However, logging in to my own delicious account, I was shocked to discover that my user name no longer existed, nor any of its variations!
I decided to get to the heart of the matter and turned to Twitter. I found a Twitter account for delicious and within minutes of posting my query, I received the following reply from @Delicious_help:
Gosh! While I didn’t particularly like the response to my question, I was super impressed with the speed it arrived in my timeline. I relayed the news to my colleagues, both of whom were almost dumbfounded about how I had turned to social media rather than Google in the first instance and how quickly I’d used one social software tool to investigate another. One informed me that her 15 year old son would be impressed!
To be honest, I didn’t give the process much thought at all. Yes, I could have searched for static information on the topic via a search engine, but what I really wanted was a quick response without all the guff. To me, that’s the beauty of Twitter; my professional learning network (PLN) is often my first port of call for issues relating to education and e-learning and today it proved faster and more effective than Superman himself!
A couple of takeaway points from yesterday’s experience:
If there’s one thing the Christchurch earthquakes have taught us, it’s the importance of current backups for all digital data. When was the last time you backed up your desktop computer, laptop or phone? I recently bought a 1TB external hard drive for my laptop at home but am the first to admit that, other than serving as a really large holding space for my music files, I have little faith in its ability to restore everything up in a disaster. Firstly, I’m not as organised at systematically backing up files as I’d like to be and, secondly, there’s no guarantee that a falling object will crush my laptop but miraculously miss my external hard drive located somewhere else in the house.
Derek Wenmoth’s post earlier this year about clouds and silver linings highlighted the value of storing digital data offsite. There are a plethora of cloud-based synchronising services available, many with a substantial amount of free storage as well as options for professional subscriptions. The concept is great: back up important content by sending it into the cloud, or synchronise various digital devices (computers, laptops, mobiles) in one central location. It can also be a good way to share folders and files with others. But what about security and bandwidth issues? Is cloud syncing more of a short or long term solution?
I have been playing with a couple of online synching tools recently. I have long had a partially utilised Dropbox account and have recently come across SugarSync. Here are my general impressions of both.
Dropbox has been around since 2007 and this review gives you a quick glance at its services. The basic plan gives you 2GB of free storage with options to upgrade to pro versions. It works well for Windows, Mac and Linux but has limited mobile functionality, even though it has applications for iPhone, Android and Blackberry. The web interface is simple to use although it only allows you to sync one folder of content. Be aware that their privacy policy was modified in April 2011 to read: “We may disclose to parties outside Dropbox files stored in your Dropbox and information about you that we collect when we have a good faith believe that disclose is reasonably necessary.” That’s not to say that everything you store is automatically shared with the masses, but I’d take a cautious approach, as I would with any cloud-based storage system.
I have only recently ‘discovered’ SugarSync. So far, it’s looking pretty good to me. The basic, personal service is free and allows around 5GB of storage but with a 25MB limit for public file sharing. That’s important if you’re wanting to share videos. It offers services across a range of platforms and its mobile applications seem more stable than Dropbox. There are multiple ways to increase the free storage limit, including various types of referrals allowing another 500MB each, but I found many of them to be quite gimmicky. It is easy to synchronise multiple folders and files via the Magic Briefcase icon on your desktop (which takes you to the web interface). Security appears to be similar to Dropbox; nothing in the cloud is ever 100% secure.
A more comprehensive comparison between Dropbox and SugarSync can be found here.
I read with interest an article in The Dominion Post this morning entitled Online is offside, All Blacks warned. Stuff has linked to the article World Cup Twitter ban for All Blacks. The upshot of the story is that the All Blacks, in response to a drive from senior players, will not be allowed to engage in social media for the duration of the Rugby World Cup. In particular, Twitter, personal Facebook pages, blogs and newspaper columns are deemed out of bounds and described as a “distraction”. Official All Blacks Twitter and Facebook accounts, along with the mainstream media, will be the primary means for interacting with the public. But what about telephones, email, tv or radio interviews (often live)? To me, there is little difference between social media and other forms of communication in this scenario.
As an organisation, we have been exploring ways to build our brand via social media and the issues associated with this. We have a social media policy which is accompanied by a set of guidelines for staff. Comments made via personal accounts must be clearly stated as our own and not necessarily shared by our employer. ‘Official’ accounts must be authorised by senior management and social media best practice and protocols apply. This pretty much goes without saying and prudence is expected.
I wonder whether developing a policy with clear guidelines about the appropriate use of social media would be more suitable for a business or public body such as the All Blacks, rather than implementing a blanket ban? Obviously anything that could reflect badly upon an employer, or information that is commercially sensitive, is automatically a no go area. But how about using social media to enhance and harness the power of a brand in a positive way? To me, careful and strategic use of social media can have positive and wide-reaching effects that far outweigh the lost opportunities we risk when imposing a blanket ban.
Mashable had a blog post today talking about 10 people who lost jobs over social media mistakes. My question is: is it the social media at fault, or is it user error? To me, these are behavioural issues in which social media was simply the vehicle. I agree that the behaviours were not appropriate, but by placing the blame on social media is somewhat misleading, even sensationalist. Some time and effort spent on exploring and defining the lines of separation between personal and professional online behaviour could be a valuable solution here.
Turning the Kaleidoscope 