DIGME 406 Twitter FAQs

Q: Why Twitter? What makes Twitter special?

A: Twitter is special because it is open. You don’t even have to be a Twitter member to see other people’s tweets. To correspond on many social media platforms, you must be connected. Take Facebook for example. It is possible to send a message to “non-friend” on Facebook, but that message can get buried, and it is hit or miss as to whether or not it will even be seen, let alone responded to. With Twitter, you do not have to “follow” someone or be “followed” by them to communicate if your settings are set to public, which is the default. With Twitter, there is unparalleled access to people of knowledge and influence. While Twitter can be used as a broadcast medium, there is a conversational culture that is present, and that presents exciting possibilities.

Q: How do I know who I should follow?

A: Begin with a search at http://search.twitter.com. Use search terms that reflect your interests in things you would like to learn more about. That is how to find some initial people to follow. Then, when you discover someone who seems knowledgeable or influential in that area, take a look at who they are following and interacting with. Look at their feed and see whose tweets they are retweeting. Viewing someone’s followers can be a peek into their mind. You can see the connections they have made, and what fields of thought they think are important. Then when you find someone else that seems interesting, repeat the process.

Q: How can see only tweets related to #digme406?

A: Everyone should use the #digme406 hashtag on every tweet you want the group to see. That way you can search for #digme406 and see tweets tagged with that. Also, I have set up a list of everyone in our group. You can subscribe to the list at https://twitter.com/billgx/lists/digme406 and see all tweets by group members, not just those with the hashtag.

Q: How do you keep up with everything? I don’t want to follow too many people, because then I won’t be able to read everything.

A: One popular analogy is to think of your Twitter feed as a stream or river. If you are thirsty, you don’t try to drink every drop that comes by. Dip your cup into the stream and take a sip or a gulp, whatever suits you. Don’t feel guilty that you haven’t kept up with everything, because that’s not the point. The point is that you are on there and getting benefit from being there.

Q: What is the best way to use Twitter?

A: The best way is the way that works for you. If you are always on the go, the Twitter mobile app might be best. If you have a tablet or computer, you might want to consider using Tweetdeck, which provides added functionality to Twitter. With Tweetdeck, you can get several views of Twitter at once. http://tweetdeck.twitter.com Tweetdeck lets you view the tweets of individuals, lists, or that include specific terms or hashtags. It is very powerful.

Q: What is a “tweet” exactly?

A: Originally, a tweet was 140 characters long. A short bit of information. Just a tweet.

Q: What is a “retweet”?

A: A retweet is reposting a tweet shared by someone else. It is a way of sharing what was said. You can do that with or without comment.

Q: Who sees what I tweet?

A: Normally, people who follow you see your tweets, although if your tweets are public (the default) anyone can find them by viewing your profile and clicking on tweets, or they can see them by using a search that matches something you’ve posted. One way to make sure someone sees a tweet is to @ “at” them with their username. If you “at” someone, they get an alert telling them about it.

Q: What else happens when I “at” someone?

A: When you begin a tweet with the @ symbol, the tweet is directed to that user alone, and the tweet doesn’t show up in your other followers’ Twitter feed. One common work-around for tweets that you’d like others to see is to put a “period” in front of the “at” as in .@billgx. That simply makes the tweet begin with something other than @ so the system doesn’t hide it from other users. That being said, an @  beginning message is not private. It can still be viewed by others. It is just not pushed out into follower feeds. There is a direct message feature that can be used for messages that are not meant to be publicly viewable.

Q: What should I tweet on Twitter?

A: Share anything you like. Tweets related to our Social Media studies should be tagged with #digme406

Q: How often should I tweet?

A: It’s difficult to have a great conversation or discussion if you only check in with us once a week. Every day would be ideal, but a few times a week would be sufficient.

Q: What are “powerups” on Twitter?

A: Powerups are a way to “gamify” the course so we can keep score each week as a comparison with one another. I will post more information on powerups very shortly.

Q: What is the best way to use Twitter?

A: The best way is the way that works for you. If you are always on the go, the Twitter mobile app might be best. If you have a tablet or computer, you might want to consider using Tweetdeck, which provides added functionality to Twitter. With Tweetdeck, you can get several views of Twitter at once. http://tweetdeck.twitter.com

Are there really educators out there who assume that our students are digital natives and highly tech-proficient? That’s a dangerous assumption to make. The research that I’ve read (Kennedy et al., 2008; Kvavik & Caruso, 2005; Schmidt, 2010), and research that I’ve done (Genereux, 2014) points to the fact that the more technologically complex a task is, the less likely it is that our students know how to do it.

Take for example, posting a photo on Snapchat. It is a much lower technological leap to use a mobile app and a mobile camera device than it is to publish a photo on a web page using HTML like was required in the early days of the web. Apps simplify everything, and almost no technological acumen is required.

What about publishing a video? Again, if they are using an app like Snapchat or Instagram, it is no problem. But if it requires using an editing program like Adobe Premiere, and uploading the edited video to YouTube, far fewer have done something like that.

It is no great secret to those of us who are teaching technology, that our students in general, are bringing minimal tech skills with them that they’ve already acquired. Of course there are exceptions, and we always have some enthusiastic learners who have some deep technological knowledge. However, true tech virtuosos fluent in a variety of technologies are few and far between. Typically, if one of my students has a deep understanding, it is in a narrowly defined area that they’ve spent a great deal of time exploring.

The article Students Say They Are Not as Tech Savvy as Educators Assume is the first time I recall seeing that students themselves say that

in order for high schools and colleges to better serve them, it is important to challenge the assumption that students are digital natives.

Just because a person is technology dependent does not mean they are technology experts. I’m completely dependent on my automobile. I drive it every day. I know a few things about how it operates. But I am far from being a car expert.

The good news is we live in an information-rich culture. If we want to get better at something, chances are good there is already good (and often free) information out there that can help us to get better. Mostly this is about being curious and having the will to learn something new. I think it is up to educators to help students to make connections about how relevant some of these technologies are, and how useful it might be to learn them.

References

It is good to make records of where you stand, just so you are able to see growth over time. As a kid, I made marks on my wooden closet door to track my height. I was such a slow growing kid, it took me several years to grow six inches!

I wish I had thought of doing this when I first started out using social media. I would have seen a lot of rapid growth in the early days, followed by some years of stagnation while I worked on my Ph.D. Now that that project is completed, I’ve started some online activities back up again. So I can track my progress this year and into the future, here are some benchmarks of where I stood in January of 2018.

Twitter

On my Twitter account @billgx on January 20, 2018,  I had tweeted 15.7K times, having 3101 followers and I followed 2814. I had 5175 likes and was listed on 41 lists. I also noted that I had posted 644 photos and videos. I had 0 moments, as I don’t know what moments even are.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a newer form of social media, and I haven’t been a very active user on that platform either. Below is a snapshot of my LinkedIn profile information.

On January 20, 2018 I had 711 followers on LinkedIn. I also had 29 profile views, 124 post views and 3 search appearances. At this point, I don’t really know what time frame those stats occurred in, whether they are over the last month, or since I joined LinkedIn. My profile strength was listed as Intermediate.

YouTube

Out of all of these, I’ve used YouTube the longest. For some reason, I have two YouTube profiles, billgx and bgenereux. I seem to remember this forking happening because I couldn’t recover the login to my billgx gmail account and I wanted to use gmail, so I made a new account bgenereux. Interestingly, I still have full control of billgx on YouTube. I just can’t read billgx’s email for some reason.

billgx has been around since 2006. In twelve years, I’ve had 1.3 million views on my videos, 626 subscribers, with a total of 144 videos uploaded. Last month, 22,790 minutes of my videos were watched, with 42,559 views counted, and 62 new subscribers added.

My Bgenereux youtube account gets a lot less attention. In January 2018, I accidentally started posting videos related to the DIGME406 Social Media class, and just kept going with them. So I’m going to benchmark it to see what happens with this new activity.

On bgenereux, I currently have a lifetime total of 888 views and 0 subscribers. I had 203 minutes watched during the past month, and 79 views. On January 20, 2018 I had 12 videos uploaded on this channel.

Facebook

I’m also including information about my billgx Facebook profile. On January 20, 2018 I had 900 friends on Facebook. I used to have more than this, but I’ve done some housecleaning and removed some people I don’t know and I know some people have “unfriended” me as well.

I’m pretty open about who I will connect with on Facebook. I suppose it could cause me problems at some point. But so far, the benefits of being open to new connections with people I don’t know have outweighed the risks. It used to be that I knew everyone I connected with on Facebook personally, while nearly everyone I connected with on Twitter, I had never met in person. For the most part, it is still true of Twitter, but my Facebook friends have more virtual friends in the mix now than before, and I feel my network is improved because of it.

This spring will mark the 10th anniversary of my online social media and blogging activities. It has been marked with ups and downs, but I still do these things because I get tremendous value from my online participation.

I must have been excited to be at SXSW in 2008, because I signed up for Twitter in the wee hours of the morning.

Of all the social media I have experimented with using, I would say that Twitter has consistently proven to be the most valuable to me professionally because of its openness. When someone is on Twitter, unless they have a private/locked account, to me it indicates a certain willingness to correspond with others on Twitter. To me, that represents endless possibilities because there is so much to learn and so many people to learn from.

This semester I am leading a group of K-State students in an online journey as well. We will be studying social media together in a distance learning class. I have a number of ideas I want to share as a result of my own online experiences as well as those of others who have succeeded and failed in the world of social media.

In preparation for the course, I’ve done a fair bit of reflecting on where I have been and where I am currently with respect to using social media and online tools. One thing I noticed right away is that I wrote a lot more back then than I have recently.

I may never get back to the level of where I was when blogging and tweeting was new and exciting. However, I did set a goal for myself to write 52 blog posts in 52 weeks in 2018. That’s at least one per week. Given that I have numerous blog post drafts that I began but never published over the past few months, I think one thing I need to focus on is just finishing what I’ve started. Clicking ‘publish’ would help.

Another goal I have for 2018 is to understand two social media platforms that I haven’t given a lot of attention to yet: LinkedIn and SnapChat. I have been on LinkedIn for some time, but really haven’t realized a huge value in using it yet. However, my recent visits to the platform tell me the environment is quite a bit different than when I first signed up for it. It feels more like a community of professionals, rather than simply a place to post your resume.

I want to learn more about SnapChat mostly because that is where young people hang out. Of course, I understand that is precisely why young people have forsaken Facebook for SnapChat in the first place, because they want to hang with people their own age. However, I am interested in learning more about what the young find so appealing in the platform. I’ve had a few quality exchanges on it, but I’m not very consistent about checking it. I’d like to up my game on that platform.

Occasionally the family and I go out to the theatre to see a movie. Mostly we just stay home because typically when I shell out hard earned dollars to see the latest thing out of Hollywood, I come home disappointed. Seriously, the ‘hit or miss’ at the theatre has become mostly ‘miss’ in my book. Earlier this year on Facebook, I complained about the awful Planet of the Apes movie that came out this sumer. Most recently, my family saw Star Wars: The Last Jedi at the local theatre. My kids loved it, but I was not impressed.

Mostly, over the past few years, while I’m home for Christmas break, I like to DVR a bunch of movies and watch them. I like to scan through the TCM offerings, and if the description sounds good I’ll record it. The other channels have some good movies too, but TCM’s are commercial free, and all classics that somebody somewhere has decided they are worth showing. I’ll watch a bit of the film and if it draws me in, I’ll watch the whole thing. If not, I’ll either watch something else, or I’ll take a nap. I have found some great films using this method, and also have taken some great naps.

This week, I came across a great show called The Mortal Storm. It featured some actors that I recognized, Jimmy Stewart and Robert Young, among others. It was set in 1933 Germany when Hitler first came into power. It was made by MGM in 1940, before the US was involved in the war in Europe, and was deeply critical of the German leader and his policies. I think that it is interesting how a Hollywood studio took a stand in uncertain times, and wonder if such a thing could happen today.

What struck me most, I think was the professor character who was arrested. I remember from my history lessons that in Nazi Germany all of the intellectuals, including the professors, who dissented in any way were rounded up and done away with. This was the first time I recall seeing that historical fact portrayed on film.

I wondered what it would take for a similar change of tide to occur in our country? How would I react? Almost everyone in the film seemed to buy into the new way of thinking. The professor’s family was split, with his sons aligning with the Nazi’s, while he and his wife and daughter held out against them. The daughter’s fiancee joined up as well, and she refused to go along for the ride.

I thought it was a very dramatic film with a compelling storyline. I could see parallels to what is happening in the world today. Our country seems very sharply divided along such different points of view of what is right and wrong. It is a little disturbing to wonder about the future. How many folks would stand up for what is right? How many would go along with what seemed to be the popular point of view, right or wrong as it may be?

If you get a chance to see The Mortal Storm, I recommend it. It will make you think.

For several years, I’ve wanted to make the Christmas lights blink to music. I finally made it happen this year using Lightshow Pi software and a Raspberry Pi computer. For an extra bonus, I recorded my daughter and I singing at a recent Christmas concert. I put that recording into my lighting system, and here is the result:

This is a great STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and technology) idea that will appeal to students of all ages. I love this idea! Design and construct the important parts of your community out of gingerbread (graham crackers) with icing, candies and for the older students, circuits and programming. What buildings best represent your community? Represent them in edible form. And for those looking for an extra challenge, partner up with another group of students in a different community and video conference with them to learn more about their community.

Read more about the project at: http://gingerbreadstemcommunity.weebly.com/project-instructions.html

Search Twitter for #gingerbreadstem to see examples.

Well, I’ve been working several months in Unity 3D, and I only today discovered this wonderful time-saving tip. Unity has a quirk (at least I call it a quirk) in which you can edit code and project properties while doing a run mode test, but every change you make is lost when leaving run mode. I think the purpose is to see what effect temporary changes have on a project without having to make them permanent first. But it gets annoying if you happen to forget that you are making edits in run mode.

Well, here is the solution that I’ve only now discovered. Simply edit the Unity preferences to make color mode display a different color when it is running.

I’ve changed the interface to show the color red during playmode. You can find Unity’s preferences either under the pulldown menu Unity -> Preferences on a Mac, or under Edit-> Preferences on a PC.