Facing the backchannel at FOTE10

Download Building_on_firm_foundations.mp3

At the beginning of this month, full of cold and coughing for England, I gave a 20 minute presentation at the Future of Technology in Education event at Senate House in London. It concerned the value of creating a personal learning network using RSS, Twitter and other web tools as a way of improving your own continuing professional development for free in the difficult economic times we now all find ourselves in.

Subsequently reading the Twitter backchannel following my talk was a sobering experience to say the least. Reaction was mixed. Some had tweeted very positively and enjoyed the practical nature of the presentation which they felt would be an ideal introduction to a Twitter newbie.

Others were less encouraging and said I was preaching to the converted and some complained of my choice of PowerPoint formating, colour scheme and musical accompaniment.

After a day to reflect, Chris Grant summarised his impressions of the negativity clearly felt by a faction of the audience in his blog post FOTE10 and what I learned from Joe Dale reminding colleagues to not forget about the needs of everyday staff and learners when it comes to using technology effectively to enhance learning and that I was a brave man to present in the way I did! I've reflected a lot too on what happened and I'm more than happy to admit that I perhaps underestimated how techno-savvy the 300 odd people present in the room were.

However, to be honest having taken part in numerous backchannels in the past, I was surprised by some of the less supportive, nay flippant, nay downright rude tweets coming from certain individuals who felt the need to express themselves in this way. Obviously delegates are entitled to their own opinions, but I agree with Microsoft's Ray Fleming's comment on this Paul Smith post Looking back on FOTE10 where he says:

Over the weekend somebody (on Twitter) said that they wouldn’t be brave enough to present at an Education conference with a Twitter backchannel, because their “skin isn’t thick enough”.

I think that’s a real issue – if the back channel instantly critcises people who say things which are controversial, or (as happened twice on Friday) before they have even said anything – then it could lead to presenters striving for blandness, to avoid irritating anybody in the audience?

If you would like to watch an enhanced version of my talk complete with the Twitter backchannel as it appeared in real time, feel free to click on this link which Martin Hawskey from JISC has kindly created using the iTitle tool.

For those who are not yet completely au fait with the power of Twitter, RSS and other web tools as a way of nuturing a PLN and improving your own CPD, I've added all the links I refer to in the presentation below as well as including an audio version of my talk which you can download above. Comments as always are welcome.

7 Easy Steps for Creating Your Own PLN

Finally, thanks to Tim Bush and Frank Steiner for organising FOTE10 and for taking the trouble to produce embeddable video clips of all the presentations so they can be easily shared online.

Show notes

Twitter for educational purposes and PLNs

On the important difference between hitchhiking and bandwagon-jumping

Are we thinking? Then I'll begin...

Coming to terms with Twitter

Mike Elliott tweet

Mustering the MFL Twitterati

Tweetdeck

Twhirl

Seesmic Desktop

Pruning your PLN with Friend or Follow

How to bookmark Twitter links

Flash Forward

New growth from the grassroots

Keeping up with the Twitter times

Joe Dale - Keeping up with the Twitter times

SiftLinks

Subscribing via RSS & Google Reader to classroom blogs

What does your PLN mean to you?

Web 2.0 Futurelab event

MFL Flashmeeting

How to videoconference with Flashmeeting

MFL Show and Tell

You and Yours: the follow up

Raid on IT budgets 

Comments

[Nathan Cobb]

Joe

I was at #fote10 and while watching your presentation made the following tweet

"I understand what Joe is saying but I don't think this is the future - most people here probably know most of this and are doing it #fote10"

Please accept my apologies for missing the point at the time and I am very sorry for any offence caused. It was not my intention to be unnecessarily mean. Chris Grant has it spot on at the end of his post when he describes how he can use what you were talking about with teachers. I use the resources you were discussing in much the same way and have seen huge benefits from it which I am always keen to emphasise to teachers where I work.

Nathan

[Joe Dale]

Hi Nathan,

Absolutely no need to apologise. I actually thought your tweet was very measured and fair. What I didn't appreciate was the derisory overtones some felt they needed to add to their comments which were neither constructive nor helpful.

I don't normally rant on this blog, prefering to be more objective than subjective, but I'm glad I did decide to blog this in the end as I think it needed to be said.

I appreciate the swiftness of your feedback and concern. I hope other teachers find the points made in the presentation and accompanying links useful and see how Twitter plus other tools can be used in such a positive way for their own embetterment.

[Martin Hawksey]

Hi Joe,
I doubt it will make you feel any better but as highlighted by Steve Wheeler you are in good company http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2009/12/weapon-of-mass-distraction.html

I like Steve's closing thought:

"we should engage in academic discourse and we should feel free to criticise the views of others, but let's conduct ourselves in a manner that is constructive, non-offensive and professional. That's what our students would expect from us, isn't it?"

Thanks for highlighting the twitter subtitling.

Martin

[Joe Dale]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for the comment and for including Steve's link. I sympathize completely with the sentiment of the post and I appreciate what he means by 'tweckling' having experienced first hand.

Thanks too for creating the iTitle version of my presentation. It made for interesting if at times uncomfortable reading!

[Graham Davies]

Joe, I just watched the video recording of your talk, with the Twitter feed subtitles. It was a very good practical talk, highlighting the most important features of building a PLN using Twitter as one of the main tools.

It is clear from the backchannel comments that some of the members of the audience felt it was too low-key for FOTE – but this often happens at major conferences and I would not let it bother you. I delivered a low-key presentation at EUROCALL 2010 this year, but I made clear at the beginning that I was not going to present something ground-breaking. I described my presentation as a “trip down memory lane”. Have a look at the video recording if you are interested:
http://iufm.u-bordeaux4.fr/ressources/recherche/eurocall2010_conf1

We used CoveritLive as a backchannel at EUROCALL 2010, picking up both CoveritLive comments and Twitter feeds using the #eurocall2010 hashtag. The record of these feeds is in the EUROCALL 2010 blog, e.g.
http://virtualeurocall2010.blogspot.com/2010/09/eurocall-2010-day-2-parallell-sessions.html
You can see that EUROCALL people are nicer than FOTE people! But we edit out rude and flippant comments – which we can do on the fly.

On the whole I think you got off lightly. Backchannels are often used to transmit negative and flippant comments by people who have nothing better to do and would not do this in public using their real names. I have seen far more negative comments in backchannels. Overall, you got more positive than negative backchannel comments on your talk.

Re the comments on the music, well, we all have different tastes. I think the music livened up the slideshow.

Only one negative comment I would agree with. Blue text on a bright yellow background is, according to my daughter (a professional graphic designer), not a good combination as it consists of two primary colours that cause a “bleeding” effect when viewed by some people. Some colour combinations should never be used, e.g. red/green, blue/orange, yellow/violet (or colours close to these) as colour-blind people cannot read them and normally-sighted people find them hard to read.

Graham

[Isabelle Jones]

Dear Joe

I feel strongly that being critical-and not constructive-on Twitter while somebody is trying to make a point in public is the equivalent of heckling people-neither big nor clever. These people would probably not even say a word to you if they saw you face to face. I also think that if they behave in such a way, they are not where they say they are. A PLN needs to be supportive, inclusive and non-judgemental and they should demonstrate that by the way they behave too.

[Joe Dale]

Dear Graham,

Thank you for your comment. I agree that some of the audience clearly felt that the talk was too low-key for them which is fair comment, but what surprised me was the way in which they felt it was OK to voice their frustration in the tweckling way they did.

I appreciate it could have been a lot worse though.

Thanks for the Eurocall links and for the colour scheme recommendation. Much appreciated.

[Joe Dale]

I totally agree Isabelle!

[Graham Davies]

I agree, Isabelle. I like the term "tweckling". It's useful to describe an unpleasant feature of Twitter. People who heckle you vocally can be put down, but people who use a text backchannel in this cowardly way are more difficult to shut up. I used to be against censorship, but having seen the destructive effects of backchannelling and the abuse of Twitter and social networks, I am more inclined to use it. At EUROCALL 2010 I immediately zapped flippant comments in CoveritLive as soon as they came in. And two social networks to which I belong have had to eject a persistent spammer/heckler as he was spoiling the environment for everyone.

Constructive criticism - fine. Childish and flippant comments - no!

Graham

[Sarah Blankenship]

My name is Sarah Blankenship, I am a student at the University of South Alabama. I am currently enrolled in Dr. Strange's EDM 310 class. This was a very informative post. Thanks for sharing!