Twitter fixed my dishwasher

A few weeks ago I blogged about how Twitter had helped me with my son’s maths homework. Well here’s another Twitter story for you.

On Wednesday last week I was working from home to get some marking done. I’d spent about an hour the previous evening trying to fix our dishwasher. I’m not very good at white goods maintenance but I knew enough to clean out the various filters and the pump and find the reset function. Unfortunately it still didn’t work – I could get the numbers to light up but no water would flow into the machine. I thought it was well and truly bust.

Then I had an idea, why not ask on Twitter how to fix it. So that’s what I did…

At 10.06 am on 28 October I tweeted the following – ‘Is anyone any good at fixing dishwashers? Cleaned filters and pump last night but still bust’

And at 10.16 am I got the following reply ‘@stujohnson Sometimes you need to tip them forward a LOT ie over 45 degrees to reset the “safety” microswitch’

Which in a spare 5 minutes later in the morning I did. And lo and behold – it worked! So, thank you to Twitter and thank you to @adijeff, who you should definitely follow if you have any white goods maintenance queries!

Next time I plan to blog about something more educationally focused – promise!

Automating events notification

After last week’s Friday afternoon blogpost on how I’m using RSS, Twitterfeed, Twitter and Facebook to engage with our students, I thought I’d write a follow up.

Up until now I’ve only connected up our news item RSS feeds to Twitterfeed but I haven’t connected up our events RSS feeds. The reason for this is that some of our events (e.g. our workshop programme) we publish in bulk at the beginning of term and so RSS out from these wouldn’t work in a timely fashion. Then I had an idea (just as I was trying to get to sleep) – what about creating a collection portlet on our website (Plone) and set the criteria to only display events that are 24 hours in the future. Then if the RSS from this collection was connected to Twitterfeed the events would appear automatically on our Twitter account 24 hours before they happen, which in turn would appear on our Facebook fan page. All of which would neatly feed in to our followers’ news feeds without me having to do anything (or without having to pester other people to do anything).

So this is the criteria I set in the Plone collection item:

• Item type = Event
• Location = [relevant folder]
• State = Published
• Start date (and this is the bit that makes it work in a timely fashion) = 1 day/in the future/on the day

And to my considerable astonishment it worked!

So now we’ll be letting students know of events, via Twitter and Facebook, 24 hours before the events happen, without having to do anything. And whilst this clearly doesn’t stop the need for conversation – it does help facilitate it.

Trying hard to connect

I thought I should write something about how I’m using Twitter and Facebook in Student Development at the University of Leicester. Two important things to say first:

1. I’m not saying we’re doing it perfectly – I just want to let people know what we’re doing and invite comment. Some things are going well and some things could definitely do with improving – I’d be interested to know your thoughts
2. I’ve had a lot of advice, some of it inferred from how I see people using Twitter and Facebook and some of it direct advice (thanks especially to @caffeinebomb, @ajcann, @fawcettbj and @thisisdavid)

What are we doing?

We’re trying to connect with students in order to make them aware of the services we offer to help them in their studies and their career planning. I’ve recently revamped the Student Development website to make it more dynamic by adding lots of RSS feeds to get news articles out. The other thing I’m trying to do is to connect up to people’s social spaces using Twitter and Facebook.

Broadcasting (the easy bit)

The easy bit (although it took a bit of thought to connect it all up) is broadcasting. I didn’t want to have to do this manually so I’ve automated it using a combination of RSS, Twitter, Twitterfeed, Facebook and a Facebook application called selective Twitter status (see ‘How are we doing it?’, below).

Conversation (the more difficult bit)

The more difficult bit is actually having conversations with people, and this is the bit we need to work on more. Having conversations takes time and resources but is the bit that makes the biggest difference. I’m using Hootsuite to allow multiple users to tweet to our uolsd account. Hootsuite took a bit of figuring out but is great now we’ve got the hang of it. The people who tweet to the account are me plus our Helpdesk staff – these are PhD students who work for us on a casual basis in our Student Development Zone. We need to work on this more because the PhD students haven’t used Twitter before, and we also need to get a consistent voice. Generally speaking we are being reactive, responding to requests, rather than proactive. As we follow more people though we should begin to see more people who we can help. I am trying to follow only University of Leicester students who first follow us – that way we are a) responding to the needs of our students and b) hopefully it doesn’t feel like we’re stalking them(!).

How are we doing it?

The diagram above shows how it works.

• the RSS feeds from our news items are fed into Twitterfeed
• Twitterfeed is connected up to our Twitter account and so automatically tweets our RSS-ed news items
• Facebook’s selective Twitter status application picks up the tweets and posts them in our Facebook fan page (this is achieved by adding the suffix ‘#fb’ at the end of the tweet in the advanced options for the feed within Twitterfeed (see below)

And that’s it! We’re slowly building up a bit of a following – currently 201 followers on Twitter and 147 fans of our Facebook page. We have a link to our Twitter and Facebook informationon every page of our website, along with a bit of an explanation, which you can see here.

That’s a bit rushed but I’d be interested in your comments and suggestions.

Twitter and maths homework

Just after breakfast this morning I tweeted the following:

Twitter / Stuart Johnson: My 9 yr old’s maths h/work … via kwout

And very quickly I got the following replies:

0 more result since you started searching. Refresh to see them.

1. goze01@stujohnson I have answer. Not telling yet. Get him to list the combinations of numbers when multiplied give a 0 in unit column. :-)19 minutes ago from Echofon in reply to stujohnson
2. Steepholm@stujohnson I assume there’s also some way of doing it mathematically that a 9-year-old could figure out.about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck in reply to stujohnson
3. Steepholm@stujohnson I’ve just written a little program to do it by brute force – 32 * 3125 is the only solution.about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck in reply to stujohnson
4. traceymadden@stujohnson Suspect just being asked to find all the factors of 100,000 and identify the ones that match the criteria.about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck in reply to stujohnson
5. traceymadden@stujohnson Try looking 4 clues on how they are ’supposed’ 2 solve this in their maths workbook (should lead on from last lesson).about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck in reply to stujohnson
6. pk_kent@stujohnson 32 x 3125. Do factor analysis of 100,000 – divide by 2, again by 2 etc. u end up with 2×2x2×2x2×3125about 2 hours ago from Echofon in reply to stujohnson
7. katiepiatt@stujohnson got to be 3125 x 32, I divided down 10000 by 2 until I reached a number that didn’t end in 0, then found the other factorabout 2 hours ago from TweetDeck in reply to stujohnson

So my son worked it out by:

• dividing 100,000 by 2 until he got to a number that didn’t end in 0 (3,125)
• then dividing 100,000 by 3,125 which gave an answer that also didn’t end in 0 – 32
• Bob’s your uncle!

So thank you to @goze01, @steepholm, @traceymadden, @pk_kent and @katiepiatt!!

A new tutorial on being a critical student

Steve and I have just produced a simple tutorial to try and explain/demystify what it means to be a critical student.

The tutorial is created using a simple PowerPoint slide show which is then recorded and audio added using http://screenr.com/. Screenr is exceptionally easy to use – especially when you discover the pause button. The 5 minute limit is a useful discipline. Files can then be uploaded to screenr or YouTube or downloaded as MP4. It’s brilliant.

I had some really useful comments back via Twitter (most of them within 30 minutes)  – which are listed below. If you have any comments then please let me know. This is our first experiment of doing tutorials using PowerPoint + screenr and I think given our first experience, we’ll be doing more soon.

0 more result since you started searching. Refresh to see them.

0 more result since you started searching. Refresh to see them.

1. AlexM11Nice subject-indepentent overview of critical thinking for students RT @stujohnson http://screenr.com/WX7about 3 hours ago from Screenr
2. MoMAlearningRT @AJCannRT @stujohnson: Tutorial on what it means to be a critical student http://screenr.com/WX7about 3 hours ago from web
3. nosnilwar@stujohnson I’m still baffled by the Heller quotation, but I think the academic/estate agent analogy is brilliant http://screenr.com/WX7about 3 hours ago from Screenr
4. jon_scott@stujohnson Like the idea but it needs to move faster and could have a shorter introabout 4 hours ago from web in reply to stujohnson
5. dhtpTutorial on what it means to be a critical student. http://screenr.com/WX7 (via @stujohnson)about 4 hours ago from Tweetie
6. virtualleaderRT @adamread: @stujohnson Love the screenr presentation about being a critical student http://screenr.com/WX7 Me too:0)about 4 hours ago from TweetDeck
7. goze01@stujohnson screenr looks like fun! I feel a new project coming on…about 5 hours ago from TwitterFon in reply to stujohnson
8. adamread@stujohnson Love the screenr presentation about being a critical student http://screenr.com/WX7 , will show to our study skills dept :)about 5 hours ago from TweetDeck
9. alan_hookRT @stujohnson Tutorial on what it means to be a critical student from University of Leicester http://screenr.com/WX7about 5 hours ago from Screenr
10. jobadge@stujohnson critical tut looks good stu. Any plans to customise it for Science subjects?about 5 hours ago from TweetDeck
11. scottuhi@stujohnson great, I’m blogging the link so maybe your followers will increase :-)about 5 hours ago from web in reply to stujohnson
12. scottuhi@stujohnson Like the video on critical thinking, do you plan to change the URL or can I send it to a few people?about 5 hours ago from web in reply to stujohnson
13. intuteRT: @universityboy: Tutorial on what it means to be a critical student. http://screenr.com/WX7 (via @stujohnson)about 6 hours ago from TwitterFox
14. JottersLtdTutorial on what it means to be a critical student. http://screenr.com/WX7 (via @stujohnson)about 6 hours ago from web
15. universityboyTutorial on what it means to be a critical student. http://screenr.com/WX7 (via @stujohnson)about 6 hours ago from TweetDeck
16. universityboy@stujohnson Good to see a quick and easy to follow tutorial on being a critical student. Two thumbs fresh!about 6 hours ago from TweetDeck
17. sboneham@stujohnson Pop filter=http://bit.ly/46uk9d. Move the mic a bit further away/to one side. Both should reduce plosive ‘pops’.about 6 hours ago from TweetDeck in reply to stujohnson
18. muir31@stujohnson useful tutorial on ‘critical thinking’, i will use this for my students http://screenr.com/WX7 #mscelabout 6 hours ago from web in reply to stujohnson
19. pigironjoe@stujohnson This establishes the principle, but it is short on practical advice and subject specific examples – room for follow up?about 6 hours ago from twhirl in reply to stujohnson
20. pigironjoe@stujohnson Yes, pretty good. Rooney’s dulcet tones make it for me.about 6 hours ago from twhirl in reply to stujohnson
21. msars@stujohnson Nice. Suggest 1. Gap in narration to allow reading of Catch 22 quote 2. Add e.g. for scientists to show it applies to them tooabout 6 hours ago from TweetDeck in reply to stujohnson
22. pigironjoeRT @stujohnson: Tutorial on what it means to be a critical student http://screenr.com/WX7 Feedback gratefully received!about 7 hours ago from twhirl
23. sboneham@stujohnson Excellent – like the iconography! Critical friend bit…maybe cut bit of narration, up the tempo & get a pop filter/move mic?about 7 hours ago from TweetDeck in reply to stujohnson
24. AJCann@stujohnson Nice. Cut some words at the start – they can read. Please blog about the process of how to make these.about 7 hours ago from twhirl in reply to stujohnson
25. AJCannRT @stujohnson: Tutorial on what it means to be a critical student http://screenr.com/WX7 Feedback gratefully received!about 7 hours ago from twhirl

How to tag anna

I wrote a few weeks ago about our tagginganna project. Well, it’s moving along nicely (slowly but nicely). I mentioned that we were either going to use Diigo or digress.it. If you’re interested you can join our Diigo tagginganna group and then comment on our copy of Anton Chekhov.s Ward No. 6. We’d also like you to comment using digress.it which you can do at http://stujohnson.digress.it/

And if you need a bit of guidance…

Diigo

This is how you comment to our tagginganna group in Diigo

digress.it

This is how you comment via digress.it

Over to you!

Tagginganna

A  few weeks ago Mark Rawlinson (@nosnilwar) in the School of English put a project idea to me. Months ago he got me reading Anna Karenina (because I’d never heard of it!) and since then he’s been thinking about a project related to it. As most other people in the world seem to know (I didn’t), Anna Karenina is quite a long book, more than 900 pages, the problem that Mark commonly experiences in tutorials is where students can’t quite remember where they read something. They have experienced reading a book (often a very long book) but they can’t pinpoint in the text where a particular theme, or idea, or event can be found. It therefore usually relies on the expertise and knowledge of the tutor to remember key sections for them. Mark’s suggestion was to task students with reading a paper copy of a book in the conventional way but then ask them to tag or comment on an online version of the book. The tagging and commenting would need to be visible to a defined group and, importantly, searchable.

Rather than test the project out on 900 pages of Tolstoy, Mark suggested that we start with a short story, so we’re using Ward no. 6 by Anton Chekhov (both this and Anna Karenina, and many others are available via Project Gutenberg).

Alan blogged about the project after an early meeting a few weeks ago, since then I’ve been thinking more about what tools to use for the tagging and commenting bit. Two tools seem like they might work:

1. http://www.diigo.com
2. http://digress.it

Diigo

Diigo’s strap line is ‘Highlight and Share the Web!’ and describes itself as ‘a powerful research tool and a knowledge-sharing community’. Alan didn’t like diigo but it’s growing on me (not least since I connected it up to my delicious account, but that’s another post). The groups feature is the bit that looks like it’s going to be the most useful for this project, and I’ve created a tagginganna group (which you can request to join if I haven’t invited you already) and put the text of Ward no. 6 on a WordPress site (am I allowed to do that?). I haven’t tested it yet because no one has yet joined the Diigo group – so come and join in the fun!

Digress.it

Digress.it ‘is a plugin for WordPress that lets you comment paragraph by paragraph in the margins of a text’. The blurb looks great (although I’ve had some issues with dodgy script):

digress.it via kwout

I don’t have WordPress downloaded and hosted so I’m using Digress.it to host the project instead. You can find it here and, once you have a digress.it account (which looks confusingly similar to a WordPress account but is actually different), you can start commenting.

So, please help!

Group tweeting from @uolsd

This is going to be a v brief and rough and ready post (nothing new there then). This week I’ve been thinking a lot about the Student Development Twitter account. I posted a few weeks back about using Twittbott to allow multiple people to tweet to one account, but it doesn’t work (or at least I can’t get it to work). Then a student on twitter suggested this:

Twitter / jjv1: @uolsd Use something like … via kwout

Which seems to work a treat. Multiple users can tweet to the uolsd Twitter account without having the password – I just log into the Netvibes Twitter widget for them.

The next problem was that within the Netvibes Twitter widget you only see @replies of people the account is following – which wasn’t much good. So JayJay suggested this:

Twitter / Jay Jay: @stujohnson Ahh! Only thin … via kwout

So now what we have is a Netvibes page that can be tweeted from and can see @replies from tweeters the account isn’t following. It looks like this:

I think we might be getting somewhere. Any suggestions?

Snaps from the Festival of Postgraduate Research

Here are a few snaps from today’s Festival of Postgraduate Research. Next year I’m going to amplify this.

SMART poster

I’m just putting this here for completeness. Jo, Alan and Alex have done the work really. In fact, I’m very grateful to have my name on it at all. Thanks guys!

View this document on Scribd