When social media and formal learning collide…

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!