Friendly Friday: Create a Leaner TwitterStream

How many times have you opened your TwitterStream and discovered that it's overloaded with extraneous Tweets? I did, but now I've narrowed that group to those I want to follow no matter if they reciprocate.

Some of these are Tweets of people who once followed you, yet don't any more. There are a variety of reasons why people stop following you, but the most annoying are those that friend you until you friend them back. When you friend them back, they unfriend you. I don't know anyone who hasn't had this happen.

It's understandable when people unfriend me because they follow me on Plurk or a similar network. I usually go ahead and reciprocate. I unfriend them on Twitter. In the past this has been a bit difficult, but I've found a very helpful Twitter application to help with this process.

Using Friend or Follow helps me sort through those people or organizations and decide who I will continue to follow or unfollow. Another positive aspect of Friend or Follow is that I can use it to find anyone who follows me, that I don't know about. I want to follow people who share interests with me.

In Friend or Follow, you can sort the followers, nonfollowers and friends  by username or several other categories. I used this application to reduce those who don't follow me on Twitter.

I pared this group down to those that I will follow even if they don't follow me.

For instance, I follow Howard Rheingold, but he doesn't follow me. He is very generous and always responds to questions that I've asked him in the past. I will continue to follow him. I follow Starbucks, but they don't follow me on Twitter. That's OK, because we are friends on Facebook.

I used a fairly strict rubric that works for me. Each person needs to develop their own list or reasons for following or unfollowing, and Friend or Follow can help you decide by showing you a list of those who follow, don't follow or mutually follow you on Twitter.

Friendly Friday! "No One Is an Island!"

While I have been using Plurk more often, I still collaborate with a group of educators and other like minded people that use Twitter. I'm not alone in the world, and neither are you. I post to Twitter and check out the stream at particular moments in time, but I don't always see my entire stream. I always wonder if I'm missing something significant.
I've found an online tool, a way to capture the essence of those I follow. I'm using paper.li. It's an online newspaper that's more than an rss feed. It has the look of a newspaper, and paper.li streams my Twitter contributions on the top fold.
Paper.li was created by Small Rivers to show how streaming data can be presented in an appealing way. At the moment their first "newspaper" style application is created from your Twitter feed, but the goal is to expand this web application for other streaming media.
If you haven't tried Paper.li, I would recommend it.

Winsome Wednesday: The Plurk LIKE Button

When I first learned of ARPANET in science education groups, I wanted to be a part of these online interactions. When I participated in NSF programs, I began to use online interactions like email and forums. Over the past six years, I've moved on to the semantic web. I can't even imagine not having access to interactive applications such as Plurk.

I'm actively committed to include interactive web applications and networks in my professional development and teaching. Just as the Graphic User Interface, GUI, changed the way I "see" programs, the World Wide Web changed the way I interact in the World of Electrons.

At the core of all this online interaction is the ability to acquire a vast amount of information. What we do with that information, data, has been at the core of our quest to improve the interactive life. For that, we have data mining which is performed by various programs that have improved greatly over time. Data mining has been the impetus for the birth of the semantic web which has improved the way we visualize data.

Programs, sometimes called applets, turn a set of words (data) into lists or "clouds" that vary in size by the amount of time they appear in the set, like WORDLE. Other applets use lexical databases to create nodes based on the relationships among words, like VisuWords. Other programs or applets are tiny, yet powerful, like the new search capability of Plurk as it's presented through the new LIKE button.

The LIKE button is a way that anyone can mark and monitor a particular Plurk conversation by clicking on the LIKE button. While I've previously discussed the reasons why Plurk can be more effective for professional development or any other ongoing conversations on a particular topic than Twitter, I was a bit disappointed that there was no way to mark the Plurk Stream. Now there is. Use the LIKE button.

The LIKE button is very much like using a hashtag, only better. The main advantage is that you don't have to type a hashtag in every time you tweet on a topic. In Plurk, all you have to do is click on the LIKE button to put a particular conversation in a special collection that you can check to find out if the conversation has continued. You can also use the LIKE button to find the Plurk when you want to access the conversation for any other reason. The LIKE button is a magnificent data mining tool.

Those of us who use Plurk as the main source of our professional development know how great it is. If you aren't using Plurk, what's stopping you? Join me!

Opportunity Revisted: Email Part 2

Ciber Cafe by larskflem
Attribution-NonCommercial License

Email is the opportunity revisited. Let's focus on its positive uses today. In Opportunity Revisited: Email Part 1, the history and types of early forms of email were discussed.

Although a wide range of instant electronic messaging systems flourish today, including IM, Plurk and Skype, email remains a viable option for those with limited connectivity or access to computers. Email also can be used as a more formal mode of electronic communication.

I continue to use email, but my modes of usage have changed over the years. Normally those uses now include:

* Subscriptions
* Group sign up
* official interactions
* personal interactions


Like many in my Professional Learning Network, I maintain an email address used when subscribing to various applications and sign-ups for groups that I have just discovered. Since I don't want to be spammed or attacked, Using this technique, I try to quarantine new subscriptions and other group sign-ups to this email address. If this email address is attacked through a virus, malware or theft of my identity, very few of my personal or long-term professional contacts will be included in the attack. While this may not create a fool-proof response, it is a basic layer of protection that I can maintain myself.

A specific email address for official and personal interactions can also be used. If I want to address an issue with my governmental representatives, work with colleagues or communicate with other businesses and agencies, I can.....because of the very nature of email. Namely, asynchronicity in all its forms.

Since email is considered a legal document, it also becomes a valid method of formal communication. That brings up another point, email is FORMAL communication, just as snail mail is, so I suggest that caution and minimalism should be used when sending email.

How are you using email today?

Opportunity Revisted: Email Part 1

Opportunity is my professional development focus for 2009. I will examine various aspects of opportunity. Today, opportunity revisited is the topic. My first opportunity to revisit is EMAIL. Despite the problems with viruses and spam, it still remains a viable mode of electronic communication.

Email, or electronic mail has existed in various formats, since the mid-1960's, yet many people commonly using the internet today, began regularly sending and receiving emails in the 1990's.

When I took a non-scientific poll of my Professional Learning Network on Plurk, a series of common dates emerged: 1996, 1998 or more generally in the 1990's. Some used the earlier forms of email, as they had access to university or business related email systems. One was called ARPANET, later renamed NSFNET. Others created simple programs that allowed message sharing, sometimes known as email. All were actively using email by the beginning of the 21st Century.

When did you began using email?

My Plurkadian Tag Cloud: Part 2

This screenshot is part 2 of my Plurkadian tag cloud. I am really still looking for an rss feed. Another aspect of this second part of my tag cloud, is that I noticed that some words are topics that I am against, not just what I am for...this is my story.

My Plurkadian Tag Cloud

Plurk is a microblogging social network that my PLN, Professional Learning Network, uses to collaborate in real time and asynchronously.

A wonderful new feature, is the Plurkadian Tag Cloud. These are very interesting.

I can't wait until there is an rss feed for these Plurkadian analytics.

BubbleSnaps: Quick and Easy

BubbleSnap was recommended by a colleague in Plurkadia, so I tried it out. Whether you have unlimited time to think of a clever saying to go in the bubble, or you need something NOW, BubbleSnap will work for you.

My colleague used shared how she used BubbleSnap to develop an introductory letter for her students. I think another use would be to develop a captioned BubbleSnap picture to be used as an anticipatory set, questions on a test or any number of other educational ideas.

I downloaded, captioned, emailed, saved and copied my sample BubbleSnap to blog in under 5 minutes. You can also use your Flickr pictures.

BubbleSnap is easy to use, and the steps are very straightforward. You can email, print or blog your BubbleSnap. I recommend it for anyone, but especially for teachers and students.