The other morning (I can’t remember which one now – timezone changes and all) I had a new experience in relation to research dissemination and teaching. I was invited to develop a guest blog post for the University of Manchester’s digital heritage course blog site
Having (re) experienced the late night US lack of internet connectivity, I eventually managed to send the blog post to Kostas Arvanitis and set myself up for the skype conversation to follow. It was an interesting experience. The students had been discussing the blog post in their class and towards the end of the session Kostas rang me on Skype and asked me some questions which had arisen during the session. With a poor connection and no sense of who was in the audience, I basically did a radio interview wondering how much was actually being sent down the skype line (often poor at the best of times). After we were cut off mid-way we tried again and successfully finished the session. I appreciated the opportunity to discuss some of my most recent ponderings on the shift from cultural to value networks and look forward to further discussion on the course blog.
In hindsight it was a tough session, particularly with the poor line. Even so, it’s a format I’d like to explore more fully. The blog post has posed some more questions which I will be exploring there and elsewhere. Thanks to Kostas and the students. I do hope we can do it again!
When social media and formal learning collide…
Published April 23, 2009 Education , Research , Social Media 3 CommentsTags: "cultural networks", "value networks", Social Media
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Social Media and Cultural Communication 
Hi Angelina, it was Tuesday afternoon here! 🙂
It was a first for us as well and on reflection a very useful and interesting experiment! The connection was poor indeed, but with the exception of some 1-2 seconds pauses, we were able to hear what you were saying.
I suppose a landline phone call and a speaker could have provided a better audio. The use of the university’s conference call facilities would also be another option. On the other hand, Skype only requires a computer and a (good) internet connection. I’d be interested to hear how other people have done similar things.
Thinking about how a university f2f class, a blog post and a live remote conversation can be brought together in a useful manner, I’m wondering whether adding the recording of the audio discussion (or the video discussion if one uses Skype’s video) on the blog post would be useful; a kind of merge of blog-podcast and a merge of onsite-online discussions.
Anyway, food for thought and indeed a very interesting experience! And we should definitely do it again!
I’ve added more thoughts to this blog posting at http://digitalheritage.wordpress.com/
Interesting discussion and one which I am continuing to research! Would love to hear thoughts on these ideas!
Web 2 has revolutionised the marketing, we have seen many companies jump on the bandwagon of web 2, but too many are creating the same platform, one platform looks identical to other, if teh trend continues we may soon see social media losing its character for which it was created.