Twitter for co p bex lewis & david rush

GOOD COP, BAD COP? TWITTER FOR COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE [email_address] [email_address] 17 th June 2010 Hertfordshire Blended Learning Conference 2010 Dr Bex Lewis, University of Winchester Blended Learning Fellow Lecturer History/Media Studies Dr David Rush, University of Winchester Honorary Research Fellow

Coming up…
Defining a ‘Community of Practice’
Personal Learning Environment, including Twitter!
Institutional Community of Practice, incorporating Twitter?
Building a Subject CoP , integrating Twitter?
Debate
What makes for a good CoP or a bad CoP?
Image created by @drbexl

Defining a “Community of Practice”
“ Communities of practice are formed by people [engaging in] collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor” Etienne Wenger
CoPs have three elements:
domain
community
practice
Meaning of these words? Not shared
Hence ambiguous
Image from : http://www.sxc.hu/

CoPs in Practice
Wenger’s original CoP idea been taken in several different directions
Management establishing institutional CoP
Self-interest groups using a CoP
Technology Stewardship in Digital Habitats
Tech Steward
Knowledgeable about technology and users
Sits between technology and users
Digital habitat – range of platforms, tools and apps in use

Creating Digital Habitats
“ Technology stewards are people with enough experience of the workings of a community to understand its technology needs, and enough experience with or interest in technology to take leadership in addressing those needs. Stewarding typically includes selecting and configuring technology, as well as supporting its use in the practice of the community.”
Wenger, E., White, N., Smith, J.D., Digital Habitats: Stewarding Technology for Communities , 2009, p.25
http://cpsquare.org/

Joining Communities of Practice
As an individual tech steward wish to develop your own practice and that of institution
Within institution may have to create own CoP
Outside of institution have many choices

Bex’s Personal Learning Environment

https://twitter.com/drbexl

Follow and Be Followed
Start following people you are interested in
Start following their followers – piggybacking
Some will follow you in return
Search for those using #hashtags of interest to you
Russell Stannard, http://bit.ly/9ijjX0 , 09/09
Shared Interests
http://wthashtag.com/
http://www.twellow.com/
http://mashable.com/twitterlists/

What’s hot now ?
Genuineness
Conversations before and after conferences
Consistency and Interaction
http://klout.com/drbexl

https://twitter.com/Digitalfprint http://www.whendidyoujointwitter.com/

http://klout.com/digitalfprint

http://digital-fingerprint.co.uk/

https://twitter.com/dgrush http://klout.com/dgrush

Do followers follow each other?
All the gurus are ‘friends’ (follow and followed by) digitalfprint
Last 4 rows show core of followers – a network
Image from : http://www.sxc.hu/ Account Following Followers Digitalfprint Guru 1 170 148 Guru 2 93 86 Guru 3 32 38 Guru 4 19 30 Guru 5 13 28 Guru 6 10 26 Guru 7 6 19

Is a network a CoP?
According to Wenger there needs to be some reification – production of objects to record experience
Twitter doesn’t do this
Reification in two ways
Use of Twitter support tools: Hootsuite, Tweepdiff, Twellow, Tweetbook, etc
Links to other places on web e.g. blogs
Image purchased from http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=7755704

Conclusions so far
Twitter may help us build up a network
Relationships
Reputation
In itself it is rather limited
To build a CoP it might act as a starting point
Then would need to find shared electronic spaces

An Institutional Community of Practice? Image from : http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup/?id=9458297&refnum=3720884&source=sxchu04&source=sxchu04

Understanding Community
“ The first and foremost activity of tech stewards is to understand their community and its evolution well enough to be able to respond to its expressed and unexpressed needs with respect to technology. This understanding of how the community functions includes its key activities, member characteristics, subgroups, boundaries, aspirations, potential, limitations, as well as its context. Achieving such understanding will require a combination of direct involvement, observations, and conversations with community members.”
Wenger, E. et al, Ibid , pp.26-7

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KQGRNV5

Why DON’T you use Twitter?
The majority were “too busy on Facebook” or thought Facebook was better
Don’t know anyone else using it
Had an account, didn’t understand, de-installed
Too celebrity-focused
“ really is an excuse for people to tell you what cereal they had for breakfast or complain about every little detail that makes their lives so mundane in the first place”

Staff Survey

What they think Twitter is
Online form of SMS
Platform for quick dissemination of brief information to large group of interested parties. Fast, superficial but far reaching discussion
Sending text-message length messages to an internet site. Often used, it seems to me, to share so-called news of no relevance whatsoever.
It is a social network where your comments are restricted to only 140. I tried it but found it so irritating. I do not want to know when someone is having a cup of tea.
It's a self-glorification tool for those who are unable to accept that they are less interesting than they think they are.

University/Institutional Learning Environment

http://learn.winchester.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=1203

https://twitter.com/blwinch

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/group.php?gid=106375376072443&ref=ts

Reliable?

Indicators that a CoP has formed?
Existing Blended Learning COP based on Moodle
Plus f2f and other electronic means
Orientation of COP
Mixture of “Access to expertise” and “Relationships”
Shown by content of communication and nature of meetings
Now being augmented by Twitter and Facebook

CoP for a Subject? @winchmfs

Subject: School of Media & Film Learning Environment

http://winchmfs.wordpress.com/

https://twitter.com/winchmfs

http://twitter.com/paulmanninghosw

Conclusions
Twitter Might be used as a seed for a COP based on individual special interests
Twitter Can be used to develop an existing institutional COP
Twitter Can be used to seed development of a subject COP

Thank you for your time

http://digital-fingerprint.co.uk	46
http://ltinpractice.blogspot.com	3
http://www.slideshare.net	2
http://www.cirip.ro	1

Twitter for co p bex lewis & david rush

by Bex Lewis on Jun 11, 2010

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Twitter for co p bex lewis & david rush — Presentation Transcript