The active and playful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.
The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.
Hmmm. Sounds quite like me too, except perhaps the “physical outdoor activities” bit!
I feel that since I have been blogging so little recently, and using Twitter so much, I should share some of the interesting links that I have discovered, and some of the interesting twitterers that I follow. (If I mention you, and you wish me to remove you, please let me know via the comment box – or DM me on Twitter!)
Twitterholic – According to their website, Twitterholic “robots scan the Twitter public timeline for new twits to tweet. A few times a day, we calculate individual statistics for each twittering twit in our database.” You can look up your own stats to see what your ranking is; however, it is also useful to see who the most popular Twitterers are (Barack Obama followed by Stephen Fry, as of Friday 13 February 2009). Jonathan Ross joined only 75 days ago, and he is already at number 12.
Mr Tweet is my next recommendation. When you follow him, he will suggest people that you might like to follow, including people who are particularly relevant to you, based on what you twitter about. I found loads of interesting technological educators … which brings me to my next site.
TwitterSheep is like Wordle for Twitter. If you enter your username, TwitterSheep will look at the bios of your followers and come up with a word cloud. You can see mine (well, my most recent one) on TwitPic here. Alternatively you can search among your own tweets to see what you tweet about. Mine was too big to take a screenshot …
TwitPic could do with some more explaining. Well, not much explaining. You can upload photos or send them from your mobile, and these will be added as a link to your twitter feed.
I’ve just uploaded TweetDeck to my computer. So it’s maybe not the best time to give any sort of opinion! But it gets good write ups elsewhere, and Phillip Schofield uses it. Along with loads of other people. You can see everyone’s tweets, but you can also make groups; I can therefore follow my personal friends, helpful educational twitterers, people who tweet about Malawi and celebrities, as well as getting my BBC updates etc.
Twitter_Tips is an interesting general twitterer to follow: this application (?) posts links to interesting general Twitter news.
Hmmm. There are so many more. I am following just over 100 people, many of them top class “edtech” folk, who obviously live interesting lives and also provide me with links to fascinating posts and news about new technology in education. I had hoped to add some links to a few of the interesting recent news and posts about Twitter that I have read in the last couple of days, but it is Saturday the Fourteenth now, rather than Friday the Thirteenth, and I have to get some sleep! I hope there has been something of interest to you in this post. Which will be twittered on my Twitter feed at some point in the near future …
I’ve just found Clif’s Notes … on Twitter in Education. There are plenty of links there that you could follow to find out more. Clif’s Notes linked to Tom Barrett’s post on using Twitter in the classroom, in a Maths lesson on probability. Nice one!
Terry Freedman often has very interesting articles on his blog, and as an active Twitter user, these are well advertised to other Twits with too much time on their hands. Like me. At the moment. (Snow Day 2!) Anyway, the topic of Social Networking: the Pros and Cons with emphasis on safety is one that has been covered in a variety of other places, so if that was all it was, I probably wouldn’t have mentioned the article here, even though it is quite interesting in itself. But what caught my eye was Terry’s admission that he belongs to 63 social networks! Which made me wonder … how many do I belong to?
So here goes. I may include some links, although others are more private, some I am dormant in, and others I may have been thrown out of by now for never having used them! I am sure there will be some I have forgotten.
So that’s 14 so far. Sorry, post took much longer than planned: I ended up browsing around Friends Reunited! So that’s one of the main problems of Social Networking! I was supposed to be marking!
I have been experimenting with Twitpic – this has included sending a photo from my phone, a first for me – not great quality, but then again, some of Jonathan Ross‘ are obviously snaps rather than professional, and they are fun and interesting. Although I suspect his phone is of a somewhat higher quality than mine!
One of the two or three hundred photos I’ve taken since late last night. I haven’t been out this afternoon, which is a shame because I think the snow will now be of an excellent snowman making consistency. Wonder if it will still be like that in the morning?
It just has to be done … a post about the snow in London! However, I will try to add a few thoughts on Twitter as well, and its role in helping people what is going on with the weather. In terms of transport, as opposed to looking out the window and seeing that it’s still snowing.
As soon as I got “the call” at 7am, just before I left the house, but was already warmly wrapped up (”the call” being, of course, snow day: school’s closed!”), I decided to head out anyway but with my camera rather than my rucksack. The sky was still a bit brown-grey, just beginning to clear, the air was crisp, and the snow was (still is, in most cases, at the moment) clean, crisp, fluffy, white, light and airy. I wandered around the local area, and took quite a few photos, before heading back to my back yard, making a couple of snow angels, and building a snow-face (the snow was a bit too soft and fluffy to impact together to make a full sized snow person!). I then decided that, since I was still awake, to upload my photos before going back to catch up with my sleep (now at 81% uploaded, been going since about 9am and it’s now 2pm …) and see what was happening in the world of Twitter.
A lot. Also, a lot of people were twittering using “#uksnow” (this made me discover that I’ve no hash sign on my computer, which is a bit weird); there are sites dedicated to looking at these “hashtags” and how they are used on Twitter. Exploring these links helped me find a number of interesting pages: Broadstuff reflects on how Twitter has helped people find out what the transport arrangements have been like around the UK; there’s a great map mashup showing how much snow is falling in different parts of the UK; I’ve started using TwitPic because so many others have been showing off their snow photos, and Channel4News were wanting people to upload pics (and to get their 3000 follower – it could be you!).
Anyway, it’s all been fun, and later I’ll see about posting some of my favourite Flicker snow pics here!
