Preparation for online meeting and collaboration

Online Meeting Tools (week 8)

Online Meeting Tools (sometimes known as 'Web Conferencing') and how these tools can be used for learning and support.

We have been asked to investigate and review three such online meeting tools tools, namely:

Skype (register at www.skype.com); 

Facebook Messenger;

Google Hangouts (at https://hangouts.google.com/)


Looked up (researched) the first and the latter, to familiarise myself with the unfamiliar. 

Skype is an application (I read) that allows video-chat and voice-call services over the internet and in addition to this on-line instant live messaging the exchange of images, texts, videos and any digital suchlike. Person-to-person calls and also video conference calls can be conducted by means of Skype. Skype is often used by international students calling home, I have observed in passing. Skype-to-Skype calls are free of charge. The name 'Skype' was derived from its initial name 'Sky peer-to-'peer' which was later abbreviated to 'Skyper'. Dropping the final letter left the current title 'Skype' for which a domain name was available. So here we have it. Skype. Though I have seen many people using Skype, I myself hitherto Have avoided this means of communication. Using a conventional landline telephone while standing in a public telephone box freaks me enough already (I mean, hearing peoples' voices coming right out of telephone wires would you believe it!), so the prospect of engaging in conversation with not only audio but own live visual imagery right there in front of me is way off my last-century wavelength. Whatever, anyway, will have to do it, to complete the learning outcomes of this Social Media for learning course. Wait a minute! I cannot but notice that these University computers I'm using (with no other computers or laptops available to me) have no microphone or camera installed, so 'Skype-ing' is a social media activity not immediately available to me. How (in)convenient! I do not have the resources to Skype.  

Regarding educational use, since this module is all about the application of Social Media to 'learning', allegedly anyway, I read that Skype is being used in schools in unique and interactive ways, to interestingly fulfil educational goals and further learning opportunities, for example, connecting students who speak different languages, holding virtual field trips, and communicating with experts in specific fields of academic study. Learning in the classroom is thereby applied to real-life experiences, through Skype. 

Google Hangouts is a communication platform that includes instant messaging, a video chat system, and has SMS and VOIP features (don't ask me to explain, I haven't a clue). Google has stated that Google Hangouts is designed to be 'the future' of its telephony capabilities. The Future is Google, clearly, whichever way you gaze into the digital-communication crystal ball. I shall have to investigate Google Hangouts further, give it a go ...

Meanwhile, although only a recent user, coming belatedly to this, 'discovering' this facility in the right-hand corner of Facebook, I am becoming increasingly at ease with using Facebook Messenger, primarily to message and voice-mail my daughter who two months ago left home for pastures new (heading south for cultural Cardiff, intellectual Ker-diff, the cosmopolitan capital city of Wales). Facebook Messenger is rapidly overtaking 'old-fashioned' e-mailing that so far has been our means of communication when apart. I sense a kind of evolution occurring here, from e-mails to Facebook to Facebook Messenger to Skype to Google Hangouts, if only I could immerse myself fully in all this social media stuff. Most of this is still new to me, you understand. Easiest thing for me to do is to send a 'closed-circuit' message via Facebook Messenger on Stefano's EdTEch Heaven Facebook page. Will do this, tomorrow. 

Tomorrow's (now today's) message on our own private Secret Facebook Messenger set-up reads:

Good afternoon Stefano and those of us within the rapidly diminishing group who remain fully committed to remaining on and successfully (hopefully) completing the Social Media for Learning module. Hiya. This message transmitted with no other purpose other than to demonstrate that I too can competently use Facebook Messenger services, no problem at all. See you later, in class. Terence.

Where was I? Ah yes. We have been assigned 'teams'. I find myself placed in the 'Llinos, Di, Aeron & Terence' team. The homework task is to arrange online chats and messages, to collaborate, to:

1) Set up a Skype meeting and evaluate the features;

2) Set up a Facebook Messenger Meeting and evaluate the features; 
 
3) Set up a Google Hangouts meeting and evaluate the features.

'Features' in the sense of (1) is screen-sharing offered; (2) can you record; (3) can you present; (4) is a VOIP - Vioce Over IP - available?

4) Write a blog post collaboratively in your teams and stating which you think is best and why and put in the blog post a feature comparison of the three products

In the event of difficulty, our Tutor, Stefano (being ever helpful, as ever), can be contacted by way of 

Skype :- stefano_ghazzali
Hangouts :- stef@semantise.com

Your meetings need not be longer than 10 mins or however long it takes you to evaluate that software, advises Stefano.  I am imaging that you will need to do most of this from home as you will need to install some software, all packages are free and some even have mobile apps.

Not yet in a position (too many distractions this week) to set up meetings, for collaboration. And anyways, no one in our small and diminishing group seems to be sending a message to me, to join, to interact collaboratively. Will get back to 'Skype' and 'Google Hangouts' later... 

Facing up to Facebook

Facing up to Facebook (week 7)

I have already a Facebook account, in existence for some years now. Most people have a Facebook account and it has become the biggest Social Media website by far. I have used Facebook very basically as a 'window' for me to access others' Facebook pages, to see what close friends and family are doing, and the main reason for doing this in the first place was to keep 'track' of what my adolescent daughter Beth was up to, what she was doing. I log into Facebook at least once a day. It is only recently that I have 'discovered' how to use FB messaging. Only a fortnight ago, I came across - and used for the first time - the 'voice call' facility. Phoned my daughter now living in Cardiff. To think of all those expensive phone calls I've made over the years! On Facebook, 'voice mail' is free.  

Stefano has invited we few remaining die-hards in the Social Media for Learning group to a secret group that he has for some reason unknown to us designated 'Stefano's EdTech Heaven'. 

Stefano's EdTEch Heaven

I have obligingly joined, through my own 'secret' Facebook account, if anyone wants to look:

Terence Ogmore Batt on Facebook

Using Facebook to learn about a topic, has been requested of us. Entered 'Welsh Castles' in Facebook Search and lo and behold quite a surprise a whole range of further options to explore suddenly becomes available in regard to 'Welsh Castles', namely: Top; Latest; People; Photos; Videos; Pages; Places; Groups; Apps; Events. I was completely unaware of this.

Welsh Castles

I only now realise - in doing this, conducting this search just now - the potential of Facebook as a means of learning. Hadn't thought of Facebook in this sense before. I had hitherto regarded Facebook only as a communication tool, a way of social self-promotion and communication with hundreds of acquired 'friends'. No, this is good, really good. This is much better than I'd thought. Facebook really IS (to my surprise) a Social Medium for Learning, as well. There really is great potential here. I hadn't thought I could learn from Facebook. I'm duly impressed. I shall explore more, on Facebook's 'Search' facility. Lots to learn there.

There is the issue of whether the user has a neutral position of information coming in from Facebook, from Facebook friends; because it may be skewed because of one's connection with people (one's friends) who probably have the same outlook as oneself. I do not think this is necessarily an 'issue'. Friends and contacts are diverse and may well present one with a vastly differing outlook on life to one's own, confronting and challenging one's own position. I guess it all depends on which friends you choose. Choose your friends wisely, from all walks of life. Then you'll get the best perspective. 

Thinking about these things (using Facebook as a learning medium; using Facebook to go outside the usual restrictive 'box' of one's usual contacts and naturally acquired friendships) has really opened up my opinion about Facebook. I now regard it in a much more favourable light. Facebook (it turns out) is so much more than a simple 'Social Medium' comprising inane chatter and selfies.

Appertaining to the Use of Pinterest for Learning, now we're in Week 6

Set up my very own Pinterest account today, using my Facebook login in order to register. Easy to do, this. And from here on it's self-evident how to proceed with Pinterest, adding 'Pins' (images mostly, though also videos) - by the simple tactic of clicking the 'pin it' button - to named 'Pin Boards' (virtual notice boards) on subjects of interest to me, landscapes in the main, to form in this first instance this introduction a categorised photographic compilation of the scenery of the 'Isle of Skye', the 'Western Isles', 'Oban', and 'Other Places' (a miscellany of other Hebridean locations) on the spectacular West Coast of Scotland, Pinterest thereby acting as my own personalised media platform, to remind me of the places I've been. These boards by themselves may be regarded as 'boards on learning', at least when viewed in a geographical (a topographical) sense. Amateur (and perhaps even professional) photographers must love Pinterest. 

Unable to find a way to embed my Pinterest account - www.pinterest.com/ter39batt/ - as a direct embedded link to this blog. Can't find a 'share' or 'embed' button anywhere on my Pinterest profile home-page. Oh dear. Hang about, after endlessly frustrating attempts, I have of a sudden discovered a way to do it. Simply copy and paste the link displayed in an e-mail which I'd sent to myself, and then embed it here (via HTML & back to Compose). May not be the 'correct' way, but what the heck it works (well... kind of):

My Pinterest Profile

Terence Ogmore Batt (ter39batt)

Terence Ogmore Batt (ter39batt) High-functioning Sociopath

Pins are visual bookmarks. Pinterest is a bookmarking service that uses pictures (images) rather than writing (text). If more detail is required about a Pin, then one just needs to click on the Pin image to enter the website the Pin came from. Pinterest represents not only a astonishingly comprehensive collection of millions of photographic images, but also comprises images in the form of infographics, videos; and even slide-share presentation collections have been added. 

Not sure that any of the boards I've come across here (at first glance using this platform) provide the inquisitive and intelligent user with a meaningful 'learning' experience. It seems to me (in my admittedly limited experience) much easier (or as easy, I ought to say) to search for a chosen subject - as I have done many times before - straightforwardly by way of using Google Images, with its plethora of images on all known subjects. Or through YouTube. And in the landscape examples provided above, in my own personalised Pinterest account, I am aware that certain professional photographers who I am aware of (working in Scotland) are seemingly not present (not represented) on Pinterest - for example, the distinctive and atmospheric work of The Flying Monk, the ex-Buzzcocks drummer, John Maher:

The Flying Monk

In regard to the set task this week of 'finding boards on learning'. Well, I've just searched Pinterest for Pins on 'Learning the Guitar', and actually I'm well impressed - just now - by what I have found there. Have to retract my previous comments about Pinterest being of little or no use for learning. It's all there, in actual fact, I've now discovered. See my most recent Pinboard entitled 'Learning' (Learning the Guitar). Though actually, thinking about it, evaluating what's there, I could equally have found these videos on YouTube. And it does all seem kind of amateurish, this, to be honest, what's available on Pinterest. Anyway, after trail & error, and with increasing exasperation, I eventually found a way to embed something from a Pinterest post that I've selected on 'learning', by way of YouTube (which is cheating, I know). Here it is then, a Blues-Harp Bottleneck Slide-Guitar Duet, and pretty good it is too:

Blues Bottleneck Guitar

(3) Write a blog post including some infographics from Pinterest, we have been asked by the Tutor. Question is, what's 'infobleedingraphics' when it's at home, eh? Haven't a clue. End this exercise here. Done enough already. Leave til later.

And by the way, as a second footnote. It needs to be explained to me step by step how to embed a Pinterest Pinboard of my own choosing into a blog, this blog. I've tried (oh how I have tried), without success.  

Creating a Linkedin Profile 




The task this week has been to set up a LinkedIn profile. Easy enough. There it is, I've done it, it's done, with a scattering of personal information about myself included for all of yous in class to see. Simple really, equivalent to an electronic c.v. At present, for the time being, with this, it seems unnecessary to populate this online profile with any more personal detail than already provided. I get the idea, the principle of LinkedIn. Here it is then, a direct link created here in this blog to externally access my provisional (barely started) LinkedIn Profile: 

LinkedIn Profile (Terence)

and I've connected this with Stefano Ghazzali:

Stefano

and also with Llinos:  

Llinos

which at least demonstrates that I can 'do' it, it can be done, easy enough, I too can be 'linked-in' to everyone else with on online profile. 
An online profile such as this LinkedIn platform provides a most useful means of networking, with colleagues, with other professionals in the same field. It is in essence an 'electronic c.v.', conveying skills and qualifications to anyone else out there who may be interested, while prospecting for employment or business opportunities, say. A means of advertising oneself widely, universally, online. Greatly advantageous for one's career advancement. The one disadvantage that I can think of is that such a profile when posted is far too general, and becomes 'fixed' as an online profile, rather than being refined and edited each time for a specific and targeted purpose, as a printed c.v. can be, focusing on the individual person (or persons) addressed. To be honest, now that I'm 'retired', and set in my ways, LinkedIn as a prospective online profile is of little or no use to me. It is in fact an almost daily irritation that some friends and acquaintances bombard me with requests through my e-mail address soliciting me to become like one of them, to become like them LinkedIn. I invariably decline the offer to connect. No thanks. Not for me. I'd rather be on Facebook. Facebook provides me with sufficient social connectivity with others (and in return - even here, on FB - I have to expose to all others my 'profile') to fulfil my own limited socially-isolated needs, thank you very much. I'm a private kind of guy, me. 

Dr Sue Beckingham (Researcher in the use of Social Media in Higher Education, at Sheffield University) is an enthusiastic advocate of LinkedIn: 

LinkedIn

Getting the best from Linkedin

as indeed are many others, such as this one embedded below, easily found on YouTube, advising about getting started on LinkedIn:

As far as LinkedIn is concerned, in my present circumstance, being released from the tiresome quotidian demands and ambitions of 'work' (paid employment), I'm entirely out of it. Linked in? No thanks; I'd much rather be locked out of this particular online personal profile platform. 'Block' me from LinkedIn if you like. 
Had enough of this already. Publish this blog as it stands, send it out. Then, last thing to do this week, 'comment on blogs posted by others in the class'. OK then. 

Google Docs (week 4)

Headed to docs.google.com as instructed and duly added my own very small amount of contribution under my own signature to the developing collectively-written co-operative text. Google Docs (a free, web-based software office suite) allows users to create and edit word-processed documents online while collaborating with other contributors in 'real' time (whether contributions are conducted synchronously with other users or are chronologically separate and distinct).  Here's the link, as required, for 'ours', for our very own blog post in Google Docs:

Our Collective Blogging Google Docs Blog

Some of us are clearly more proficient at this than others, at this stage. I guess in large measure it's to do with the amount of time and effort that one devotes to this; though seemingly it comes effortlessly to Llinos (the Editor) & Tanya. Well done you two! The intention was to evaluate the three social media tools that have thus far been introduced to us. Alan and I were assigned 'Twitter', for evaluation. Twitter has been discussed and evaluated elsewhere, and the same or additional remarks added by way of Google Docs on this subject would merely be repetitious, so it seems to me, so I ('we' I mean, Alan and I) won't. 

The author emerging from Fingal's Cave, Staffa

Nevertheless, the practicalities and particularly the principle of the matter - namely, the usefulness of using Google Docs for collaboration in the production of a piece of jointly-written written work - has been demonstrated; and I (for one) have to admit that Google Docs is indeed an excellent platform for this. Would be of great use (and would generate a lot of fun) in a Creative Writing class, for example; to write a piece collaboratively on a chosen subject, a developing story. Or in composing and compiling a multi-authored academic research paper say, building this up on-line, as our Tutor has demonstrated. Yes, very useful indeed. I must get back to Google Docs, one day. Trouble is, I'm such an independent bugger (as a lone writer, I mean) that I rarely - if ever - work collaboratively on anything, anything at all. I may as well be a solitary cave-dweller in this respect, choosing to live my life outside normal society. Google Docs may change this arrogance and independence of character of mine. Wish that I'd been introduced to Google Docs years ago. Some years ago, it's clear to me now, I ought to have sought a co-author.

Watched How to embed Google Docs into Blogger, on YouTube:

                               though this did not enlighten me all that much. But I get the general idea. So I'll have another go, trying to embed our very own Google Docs unfinished document into the present blog .... Well, I have indeed (just now) successfully inserted it (see below) but - bugger it - the frame width & height of the insert are now ludicrously out of proportion, diminished:

I'm getting frustrated and pretty bored by this, this trial and error approach. I can't be bothered to research the technicalities of this embedding procedure any further. Done enough already, as far as 'homework' is concerned. So, right then, Stefano; at the next tutorial session, I shall ask you, I have made a note of it to task you with this, please show me (demonstrate to me, and the rest of the class whoever is as inept at this as I am) how to re-adjust - how to re-frame - this. It's a mystery to me.

Hi fellow students,

Twitter when introduced to us by Stefano was entirely new to me, as it was for some of you too, as evidenced in my case by my embarrassing failure to find even the 'hash-tag' symbol on the keyboard right there in front of me. Got it now, the #, the hashtag symbol, right-hand side, adjacent to the return key. Never had reason ever to use it before.

The purpose of introducing Twitter in the Social Media for Learning course seems to be to convince us that Twitter 'can be applied in an educational setting'; but from the outset I have had reservations about this. These doubts are still niggling at my consciousness even though obligingly I have set up a Twitter account - @Ogsmicroblogs - as required, making a 'tweet' or two for myself, posting short messages to classmates on Twitter limited to 140 characters, embedded a link here on my blog (to be inserted at the end of this paragraph), searched for content using hashtags, and in the process finding myself bombarded henceforward by tweets from all directions, a veritable inundation, all messages unsolicited, and the majority of no interest to me whatsoever. See what I mean, you must have realised too, as well as I have done, the irrelevance - in large part, as far as I can tell at present - of Twitter 'in an educational setting' ? QED. 

Fell into the fast-ebbing waters of the river at Ogmore Castle's Stepping Stones last week, up to my knees; first time in 69 years.#ogmore pic.twitter.com/rHN6b28cwL

— Terence Ogmore Batt (@Ogsmicroblogs) November 4, 2016

Fell into the fast-ebbing waters of the river at Ogmore Castle's Stepping Stones last week, up to my knees; first time in 69 years.#ogmore pic.twitter.com/rHN6b28cwL

— Terence Ogmore Batt (@Ogsmicroblogs) November 4, 2016

(Question is, addressed to anyone nice out there: how do I EMBED this 'tweet' within my blog, rather than simply copying & pasting, eh? Have I done this correctly? Can you access tweet (1) & tweet (2)? How to set up a Link; Share; Embed? Convert HMTL to Compose? Help required!!)

(Update: Thanks, Stefano; done that. Successfully embedded my two tweets.)

However (to continue my cursory critique of Twitter), in fairness (my only excuse is my ignorance), having now scrolled through Stefano's suggested reading list of educational technology journals (listed on his current blog under the 'Journals A-Z' section) (research papers on how Twitter is used and is useful in Higher Education), I have to admit that my initial uniformed rather casual dismissal of Twitter as a learning platform was patently wrong, or at least misguided. Sorry about that, Stefano. 

Have I - as part of the requisite 'Tasks & Homework' tasked this week - 'learned how to tweet, re-tweet and search for content using hashtags'? Yep. Done that. Finally, we have to 'pick a Hashtag' to find out information about a topic of your choice'. Subject of interest? Oh, somewhere I've been. Let's try the Corryvreckan. Hashtag. Into the.

 #Into the Corryvreckan.

I have 'discovered' through Twitter that 'The Corryvreckan' is a Wetherspoon Pub in Oban. 

Wetherspoons, Oban

https://twitter.com/jdw_Oban. 

However, frankly, I do not and did not wish to know that. I was thinking more of the whirlpool, the infamous the lethal Corryvreckan Whirlpool, situated between the isles of Scarba and Jura off the wild West Coast of Scotland, in the raging and un-navigable (according to British Admiralty charts) Gulf of Corryvreckan. I'll try searching again. Ah, that's better:

https://twitter.com/search?q=corryvreckan%20whirlpool&src=typd

(Need to 'link' this, place this tweet in situ. Having some 'technical problems' here, Stefano. Assistance needed.)

Whatever, I have checked out #corryvreckanwhirlpool using the social medium of Twitter. Not very impressed with the amount of 'learning information' contained in this. I'd get far greater a learning hit by simply Googling it. How effective is Twitter to find out information about the World's Second (or Third) Largest Whirlpool? Not very.

There are situations where Twitter must be highly conducive to social communication, 'learning' in the broadest sense. I am thinking of (for example) 'Breaking News' events, where the news is immediately conveyed to a large audience well before such news becomes 'breaking news' through the usual cable & network televisual media. Important events may even go unreported, or distorted, biased and unrepresentative, for whatever editorial or 'political' reasons. Scary this, the realisation that our broadcast 'news' even on the BBC is in fact quite heavily edited, scenes of a graphic nature routinely censured. Twitter by-passes this.

Terry Batt