Saturday, May 1, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Election on Twitter
Tweet your score, postcode and the party abbreviation with the hashtag #ukvote - eg N1 LAB 3 #ukvote or CV32 CON 4 #ukvote -
What does this have to do with digital history? Isn't this simply election journalism in the internet age? Well I thought about this for a while, is this really something of historical value?
Sunday, April 25, 2010
The Google Enlightenment
Previously I mentioned (and indeed welcomed) the digitizing of books by Google.
- It reduces the reliance on the likes of Wikipedia, by making academic sources easier to access.
- Preserves historic books which other wise may decay.
- Helps disabled students to access material.
- In addition digitizing books allows small libraries the wealth of books only otherwise available at national libraries.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Technology defeating disability
- Use of Blackboard & Moodle.
- Access to lecture notes and articles online.
- Online discussion groups on Blackboard & Moodle.
- Email correspondence from lecturers.
- Module outlines available online.
- Lecture notes given at the start of the lecture are of limited use to many disabled students.
- Lecturers who have office hours but are poor at responding to email are difficult to speak to.
- Course material which is in physical not digital format is harder to transfer into audio or braille format.
- Group discussions which take place online (such as through Blackboard) are very useful for disabled students who may otherwise not be as confident (also maybe cannot respond to body language) in a real class discussion.
- Lectures available online (or podcasts) can be reviewed several times.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Tweeting History
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
The rise of Twitter
David Cameron once joked that he refrained from using Twitter because "too many tweets make a..." Anyway, at the start of this year there were as many as 55 million tweets being made daily, so while Cameron may be avoiding the social networking website, not everyone else is!
- A micro-blogging website.
- You have your own account like other social networking websites.
- Posts are limited to 140 characters.
- You can "follow" and be "followed" by other users.
- The # key is a tag.
- Tagging allows users to see other "tweets" on similar topics.
In 2009, people in Iran and Moldova created their own searchable tags on Twitter to organize protests against their governments and share information with each other and the world. In April, Moldovans used the network to rally more than 10,000 young people against their country's Communist leadership. And in June, Iranian opposition supporters angry over presidential election results used Twitter and other forms of new media to share news on rallies, police crackdowns on protesters, and analysis.
Twitter became such a vital source of information in Iran at a time when text messaging and mobiles phones were being blocked by authorities. This was shown by the fact that the US State Department even requested the company delay a planned shut down of the site for maintenance, showing the site had become crucial in the coordination of anti-government protests.
As well as being a force against authoritarian governments, Twitter is becoming a vital tool in other ways. The head of the NATO mission in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal stated that the website was a tool in mass communication to troops. In the UK during the General Election campaign tweets related to the election are being posted using a variety of tags (including #ge2010 or #ukelection) allowing for everything from the latest opinion polls to spoof posters to be shared.
The success of Twitter is down to the fact that posts are limited to 140 characters, thus you get a short and brief message - like TED, you get a big idea in a few minutes!
#
No the # was not a typo! Tagging is central to understanding twitter. By tagging your posts (using the # and then a word connected to the topic) it allows for debate and collaboration to occur through the site.
Education & Business using Twitter
If Mike Cosgrave had his way, he would "be well past discussion forums and making them use Twitter" by getting students to use the tag connected to their course (ie. #Hi2007) Twitter as a tool in education is a separate issue, but it shows other areas Twitter can be of use in.
Businesses have been entering the social networking arena in recent years with varied success, Twitter is no exception, as print media advertising becomes less popular (and is increasingly reaching an older demographic) the Twitters of this world are becoming a popular tool to reach people otherwise not accessible to companies. It does have dangers for businesses, as furniture shop Habitat discovered when they tried to piggyback on the popularity of Iranian election tags.
Conclusion
David Cameron might be right to avoid using Twitter based on the number of politicians red faced after making inappropriate comments on the site, or worse sharing the banality of their lives. Twitter is however being used by huge numbers of people and for a huge variety of purposes, which is helping it maintain its success. It is easy however to see it as a place for people to share with their friends what is in the contents of today's sandwich or what they thought of that penalty decision in the final minutes of a match - however it would ignore a huge amount of what Twitter is about and why people use the site.
Monday, April 19, 2010
The Wikipedia Model
- Of its speed.
- Ability to search through the text.
- It's constantly updated.
- Related articles are linked.
- It's digital.
- Pages can be saved and accessed on the go.
- And of course it is free.
- Easy to use - you could access your academic material on your computer or e-book reader.
- Up to date - because the information would be digital it would be easier and cheaper for the author to update the work and for the user to download an updated edition of a text.
- Universal access - digitalising books prevents the problem Gearóid outlined when required books are no longer available in the library.
- Storage issues - e-book readers have capacity to store thousands of books.
- Search ability - unlike print material, digital sources can be searched through in a similar way to Wikipedia.
Wikipedia offers many benefits to students as outlined by Gearóid. It however is a source which can be used in tandem with academic material, though ought not to be seen as a replacement of the traditional sources of information.
Wikipedia is a good place to start research as it gives basic information on the topic which are often universal facts (dates, numbers, individuals etc), and often outlines differing schools of thought on an issue. Most usefully Wikipedia does reference, and usually provides a list of authors on a topic, key books or journals and often provide links to them in the article.