Sue Waters

A week ago I posted that I had decided to persist with Twitter and Facebook because other people who I read are obviously getting them so hence they must be worth investigating. LOL some of them have contacted me and requested me to inform them when I “get it” so they can also “get it“. 🙂 At least they didn’t say to Google it to find the answer.

Where I am with Twitter

Yes, given my addictive personality, I have become a twitteraholic in an incredibly short period of time. Why? Well twitter means that a message sent out through twitter can be distributed immediately to a group of people using a variety of methods such as mobile phones or IM services like Google Talk. What a really good concept for managing a project! Also great way to ask a question and get a response back from a group of people. Check out my twitter account if you want to see it in account.

Facebook – calling in the experts

If I am still not understanding Facebook and neither are most of my online friends then it is time to call in the experts. Fortunately a few of my students are really into Facebook and were more than happy to give me a Facebook lesson.

The student from Zambia uses Facebook a lot. He says “the key feature with Facebook is being able to keep in contact, easily exchange information and share items (e.g. photos) with friends. It is easy to lose email contact with friends. Facebook give you a mechanism to locate friends (provided they have a Facebook account) and scan through friends’ list of friends to locate the more hard to find friends”. He also stated that more of his friends overseas are using Facebook compared to friends from Australia.

So my lesson with Facebook is still ongoing and here is where I am at:

• My student has been testing out applications and sharing them with me. This has been really good because I would not have thought to try out applications and he has shared some really cool ones (e.g. Slideshow that takes photos your photos from Flickr and puts them into a slideshow within Facebook, Top Friends). Reality – I was so not sure of Facebook that I did not think about adding an application.
• I have had people join me as a friend based on locating me via their friend’s friend network.
• Learnt that giving a virtual gift in Facebook is not a good idea – they try and charge you $1.00 per gift. Maybe I have got this wrong?
• Facebook is just another way of connecting online with individuals. For some people this is their preferred method of you connecting to them.
• You can find me in Facebook as Sue Waters (with I looked like the Susan Waters further down the page).

FINAL THOUGHT

I recently attended the E-trends Unconference online using Elluminate (was really good). Participants choose the topics and 10 minutes was spent talking about each topic. Grabbed some great links and was impressed by Generation Yes Youth and Educators Succeeding web site that Jason Hando showed us. The concept is that students work with teachers to bring effective technology into classrooms and libraries i.e. students provide professional development for teachers on using technology. I think this is a really good idea.