“In the words of the Physicist Philip Anderson, “more is different.” When you aggregate a lot of something, it behaves in new ways, and our new communications tools are aggregating our individual ability to create and share, at an precedented levels of more.”

Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus, Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, New York: The Penguin Press, 2010, 25.

“Selon les mots du physicien Philip Anderson, “plus est différent”. Quand on agrège beaucoup de quelque chose, cela se comporte de façon nouvelles, et nos nouveau outils de communications agrègent nos capacités individuelles à créer et à partager, à un niveau de plus sans précédent.”

Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus, Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, New York: The Penguin Press, 2010, 25.

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Enza Antenos-Conforti, aka @iVenus on Twitter, who has been the first to leave a comment on this blog – thanks for that, Enza, I am currently drafting a reply – is a professor of Italian who has been experimenting with the use of Twitter in language teaching. This is something I am very interested about, as I have been thinking of trying to use twitter in the intermediate French class I am teaching as part of theSalford‘s University Wide Language Programme during the next academic year.

Enza has recently asked on her blog, An academic at work, a question about Correcting language mistakes on Twitter, which is really crucial for anyone who wants to use Twitter, or micro-blogging in general, for language learning.

In her own experience of learning Spanish, and more recently Portuguese, she has come accross two ways in which her Tweeple were drawing her attention to mistakes she has made in the target language:

“a direct message explicitly stating [the] error, the other in a reply message using a recast to note [the] error.”

and asks

How do others approach error correction on Twitter?

In the comments, Jose Carlos, (@ zecarlosjr) suggests, if I understand correctly his portuguese, another possibility which is to retweet a corrected version of the original tweet.

I was wondering whether there would not be some merit in establishing a new convention to make explicit that a sentence in a tweet has been corrected. The trick would be to find a letter, a couple of letters, or a sign which would be pertinent and which could be used for everyone who engages in language learning on the Twittersphere.

As I like to speak of rephrasing rather than correcting, I would like to propose using RP, which would stand for rephrased, as a possible convention. Another possiblity could be to use an hashtag or a symbol, such as for instance •

What do you think of this idea?

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La version française de ce billet est disponible ici.

Thinking of deleting your Facebook account? This is the question my colleague Cristina Costa is asking herself on the University of Salford’s post-graduate research team blog.

As far as I am concerned, I am in no way thinking of closing my Facebook account … for I have already done this about ten days ago. One needs to draw a line somewhere and I feel Facebook has crossed it one time too many.

The lack of respect for his users which Facebook has recently showed for his users is well illustrated by Matt McKeon who has produced a most remarquable visualisation of The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook, which shows the changes in default profile settings betwwen 2005, 2006, 2007, Novembre 2009, Decembre 2009, and April 2010, which I have come accross thanks to a this post on the always excellentVizthink blog.

This was not the first time I was trying to close my Facebook account, but one must say that FB makes it extremely difficult to do it. This was incidently one the things which I found most irritating with Facebook, but the list is long. The instructions available on Wiki How on How to Permanently Delete a Facebook Account, have allowed me to do it, as it was not obvious at all.

This is of course only a personal choice and anyone is free to do what he or she feels like doing.

CC Frances Bell. Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

Frances Bell, one of our colleagues at the University of Salford, has chosen to remain on Facebook, but has launched with Peter Kawalek a protest campaign, which is a good example of hacktivism. She explains how to go about it in her post No face or no Facebook privacy meme, which is accompanied with a photo on which she is masking her face. It is a matter of

• Taking a picture of yourself that represents your rejection of Facebook privacy management
• Uploading to Facebook and make your profile picture
• Circulating to your friends (via feed, message, Twitter, etc.)
• Use the hashtag #privacymemee #privacymeme

This is such an excellent idea and it is a real shame that this campaign has not gone viral.

How about you? What attitude have you adopted?

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The English version of this post is available here

Pensez à effacer votre compte Facebook? C’est la question que se pose ma collègue Cristina Costa sur le blog de l’école doctorale de l’Université de Salford.

Pour ma part, je n’envisage en aucune façon d’effacer mon compte de Facebook … parce que je l’ai déjà fait il y a une dizaine de jours. On droit établir une limite quelque part, et Facebook a franchi celle-ci une fois de trop.

Le manque de respect pour ses usagers dont Facebook a fait preuve dernièrement a été on ne peut mieux illustré par Matt McKeon qui a produit une très remarquable visualisation de L’évolution de l’intimité sur Facebook, en montrant les changements apportés au paramètres par défaut entre 2005, 2006, 2007, novembre 2009, décembre 2009, 2010, que j’ai découvert grâce à ce billet , du toujours excellent Vizthink.

Ce n’était d’ailleurs pas la première fois que j’essayais de fermer mon compte de Facebook, mais il faut bien dire que FB rend vraiment difficile de le faire, c’est une des choses que je trouvais d’ailleurs les plus irritantes à l’usage, mais la liste est assez longue. Les instructions (en anglais) de Wiki How sur Comment effacer son compte Facebook de façon permanente, m’ont permis de le faire, ce qui n’allait pas forcément de soi.

Ce choix est bien sûr un choix personnel, et chacun fait ce qui lui plaît.

CC Frances Bell. Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

Notre collègue de l’Université de Salford, Frances Bell, pour sa part, a choisis de rester sur Facebook, mais a lancé avec Peter Kawalek une campagne de protestation, qui est un bel exemple d’hacktivisme. Elle explique comment procéder dans un billet intitulé, No face or no Facebook privacy meme, accompagné d’une photo sur laquelle elle se voile la face. Il s’agit de

• Prendre une photo de soi qui représentre votre rejet de la façon dont Facebook gère l’intimité
• La téléverser sur Facebook et l’utiliser comme la photo qui figure sur votre profil
• Faire circuler l’information sur cette campagne de protestation à vos amis (par flux, messages, Twitter, etc.)
• Utiliser le croisillon-étiquette #privacymeme

L’idée est tout à fait excellente et il est tellement dommage qu’elle n’ait pas connue une diffusion virale.

Et vous, quelle attitude avez-vous décidé d’adopter?

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La version française de ce billet est disponible ici.

The end of the exam period is fast approaching and I am starting to think about a few projects I have had in mind for a while. One of them is to start using Twitter for the courses in History and Geopolitics I teach at the University of Salford. It will be a matter for me in the coming week to initiate a reflection on the best way to go about it.

My own experience of using Twitter, since November 2008, has led me to believe that micro-blogging has a strong potential to contribute to make teaching a lot more interactive. I hope that thanks to Twitter I shall be able to encourage students to participate more, especially in the courses where I am unfortunately not given the opportunity to give seminars and are therefore by lectures only. Twitter seems to have a significant potential in this respect. It will be crucial to find the right formula to encourage students to participate a lot more, even – or rather especially, during lectures, with their mobile phones. This is what I shall try to do in this series of posts.

Whilst training on the elliptical machine this morning, the idea of a first exercise, or rather a series of exercises, came to me. The idea would be to go about it in the following way and ask students:

• 1) to read the chapter of the manual relevant to the next class.
• 2) to think about the main ideas of the chapter in question.
• 3) to write half a dozen tweets on what are for them such key ideas.
• 4) to vote on the most pertinent ideas, either by using the re-tweet function, or through a poll of the twitpoll type.
• 5) to identify among the tweets sent those which are simply wrong (factual error, error of interpretation)
• 6) to identify among the tweets sent those which without being simply wrong would deserve to be more nuanced or rephrased in a more skillful way.
• 7) to examine, during the class and in groups of three, each of the tweets, and to see if every student has well understood its content. Would it not be the case, it would be the role of other students to help their friend understand the content.

I am only at the very beginning of this reflection, but felt it would be useful to write down my thoughts. What do you think about this first draft of the proposed protocole? Do you have suggestions to make? Are you already using Twitter in your teaching? Do you know resources about the use of Twitter in teaching which could be useful to me?

Many thanks in advance for your comments, criticism, and suggestions, which are always welcome..

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How to Twitter (for Researchers)

My colleague Cristina Costa (aka @cristinacost, Research Technologies Officer, at the Research and Graduate College, and I will be facilitating a workshop on How to Twitter (for Researchers), at the University of Salford on Tuesday 8 June 2010, 10:00 – 12:00.

This how-to workshop seeks to introduce participants to the practicalities of microblogging (twitter) to raise their profile, connect to other people interested in similar research topics. It will provide examples and a hands-on opportunity for researchers new to microblogging to create and start using Twiiter as part of their digital presence/ personal learning network. It will also create a space for interaction and exchange of ideas, and questions regarding microblogging in a research context.

By the end of the workshop, participants will have:

• created a twitter account;
• personalised their twitter page
• learnt about the different types of tweets
• followed like-minded people on the twitter network
• explored different uses of twitter
• started using twitter to share their ideas and network

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… So much so that I have created a new blog at Emergence Digitale/Digitale émergence. )

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… À tel point que je viens de lancer un nouveau blogue à Emergence Digitale/Digitale émergence. )

An English version of this post is available here

La fin de la période des examens approche, et je commence à réfléchir à quelques projets qui me tiennent particulièrement à coeur. Un de ceux-ci est de commencer à utiliser Twitter pour les cours d’histoire et de géopolitique que je donne à l’Université de Salford. Il va s’agir pour moi, dans les mois qui viennent, d’engager une réflexion sur la meilleure façon de procéder.

Ma propre expérience de l’utilisation de Twitter, depuis novembre 2008, m’incite à penser que le micro-blogging a un fort potentiel pour contribuer à rendre l’enseignement beaucoup plus interractif. J’espère grâce à Twitter encourager les étudiants à participer beaucoup plus, tout particulièrement dans certains des cours que je donne, tout particulièrement ceux qui ne sont malheureusement que magistraux par nécessité car la possibilité de donner des travaux dirigés ne m’est malheureusement pas offerte. Twitter me semble avoir un potentiel certain à cet égard. Reste à trouver la bonne formule pour encourager les étudiants à participer beaucoup plus, même — ou plutôt surtout — pendant les cours, grâce à leur téléphone mobile. Telle sera le propos de cette série de billets.

En m’entraînant ce matin sur la machine elliptique, profitant de la fraîcheur matinale, l’idée d’un premier exercice, ou plutôt d’une série d’exercises, m’est venue. Il s’agirait de procéder de la façon suivante et de demander aux étudiants de bien vouloir:

• 1) Lire le chapitre du manuel correspondant au prochain cours.
• 2) Réfléchir aux idées principales du chapitre en question.
• 3) Rédiger chacun une demi-douzaine de tweets sur ce qu’ils pensent être les idées principales.
• 4) Voter sur les idées principales les plus pertinents, soit en utilisant la fonction re-tweet, soit un sondage de type twitpoll
• 5) Identifier parmi les tweets envoyés ceux qui sont tout simplement dans l’erreur (erreur factuelle, erreur d’interprétation)
• 6) Identifier parmi les tweets envoyés ceux qui sont sans être dans l’erreur mériteraient d’être plus nuancés, ou formuler de façon plus habile.
• 7) Examiner, en cours et en groupe de trois, chacun des tweets, et de voir si chaque étudiant en a bien compris le contenu. Dans le cas contraire, les autres étudiants auront pour tâche d’aider leur camarade à en comprendre le contenu.

Je n’en suis là qu’au tout début de cette réflexion, mais je tenais à coucher noir sur blanc ces quelques idées. Que pensez-vous de cette première ébauche de procédure? Avez-vous des suggestions à formuler? Utilisez-vous déjà Twitter dans le cadre de vos activité d’enseignement, et si oui, comment procédez-vous? Connaissez-vous des ressources sur l’utilisation de Twitter en enseignement qui seraient susceptibles de m’intéresser?

Merci d’avance pour vos commentaires, critiques, et suggestions, qui sont toujours les bienvenus.

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