#BYOD4L Day 2 Active Communicating

I was late finishing work and on my commute home as #BYOD4Lchat was about to start. Accessing the chat via my phone was quick and easy so whilst I was on the bus I knew I could keep up with the questions posted and the conversations. However once my bus had reached my destination, I still had a short walk to my home. I have not developed the coordination to read, type and walk, so I had to catch up with what I'd missed when I got in the house. 

Neil Withnell suggested I could have used Siri. I have to admit I don't make enough use of this feature on my phone. I was inspired to explore how this could be used with Twitter. Here's what I did: 

• I asked Twitter to "Open Twitter" (feeling somewhat guilt I didn't add please, but though extra words might confuse). Siri did just that. 
• To progress you need to 'call' Siri again. I then said "Send a Tweet" and Siri opened the dialogue box.
• At this point I said "Tweet [add a sentence]" but realised that I had more to say but had not completed this. You do get the option throughout to edit by typing, but I would have like to have added by voice the remainder of the message. Perhaps I just didn't do it correctly. 

The conclusion to this mini experiment is that I need to explore more! I expect once you get the hang of it, it could be very useful. 



The #BYOD4Lchat

The tweetchat this evening explored the following questions on the topic of communication:

• How do you communicate using your mobile devices? 
• When have you failed to communicate in the classroom
• How can mobile devices aid communication? 
• How can mobile devices hinder communication? 
• Do you have one top tip for effective communication?    

As per usual the conversations were curated as a Storify which can be found below.

Top tips for effective communication

Below are a few snippets that particularly resonated with me in response to this final question of the chat. 

1. David Hopkins reminded us of the following important points when communicating 

.@suebecks be yourself, be strong/confident, be welcoming, share fairly (give & take) #BYOD4Lchat

— David Hopkins (@hopkinsdavid) January 12, 2016

2. A super example of digital communication was shared by Malcolm Wilson, where tools like AudioBoom and SoundCloud are being used in schools to capture the voices of students to share what they are learning. 

@sheilmcn @LindaOpen resources here for making podcasts may be of interest https://t.co/tnajEI1r7d #BYOD4Lchat A3 #MIEExpert #mlearning

— Malcolm Wilson (@claganach) January 12, 2016

Below is a quote from the ICT for Teaching & Learning in Falkirk Primary Schools website

"Podcasting, or online radio, is a way of schools sharing audio recordings of pupils talking about their learning, their discoveries, or discussions about class topics. The voices of the pupils, recorded and shared, speaking about the learning going on in their classroom provides a powerful way of engaging pupils – knowing that what they say they can hear played back to themselves, and also to an audience wider than the confines of their own classroom teacher or peers."

Podcasting is something I'd like to consider doing with my own students. Audio sees to be less invasive in so much as the focus is on the voice, rather than the person and the background and other aspects that need to be considered when taking a video.  

3. The tweets below are thought provoking and again resonate with my own experience and preference. During the chat it was mentioned by a few that online communication gives us thinking space - time we don't naturally have when conducting a face to face conversation. Reflecting on the tweets below which make the suggestion that the tweetchat questions are shared prior to the chat, I think this is a good idea.

The question made me think if this is this something I do often enough with my students? Secondly providing them with an opportunity to respond in class by using tools like Twitter or Socrative has proven to be of value by many colleagues, in place or in addition to answering questions out loud. 

@Stylianoudaki @byod4l #byod4lchat Great idea. The introverts (me!) would really appreciate it and would be more able to contribute

— Sue Tucker (@sueinasp) January 12, 2016

There is a lot to consider around the topic of communication in its many forms. I suspect I will come back again and again to reflect on this.


Visualisation of our communication paths 

Finally more visualisations capturing the growing communication taking place within our growing BYOD4L community.

Some of our connections and communications this evening, courtesy of @SocioVizNet #BYOD4Lchat pic.twitter.com/HBBb1YJo6X

— Mark Williams (@the_markness) January 12, 2016

Wow - our network is growing and connecting #BYOD4Lchat https://t.co/zDqJofp5dX pic.twitter.com/i0hDOtSb4g

— Sheila MacNeill (@sheilmcn) January 12, 2016

Day 2: BYOD for Learning and Communicating #BYOD4L

Today's topic for BYOD4L is communicating.

In the TweetChat #BYOD4Lchat we have been discussing 'what does communicating mean for you?' - what was clear pretty quickly was that there were two key approaches:

• broadcasting
• conversation/dialogue

Thinking about this from an Educator's perspective and with students therefore in mind I would say that BOTH approaches have value. Hers's why:


Broadcasting

There are many examples of useful messages we need to cascade to student and staff. Examples might include deadline reminders, class closures, IT and network issues, events. Here a broadcast approach is valuable. One message has the potential of reaching many. For example:

We are experiencing problems with the print server Gagarin. this is being looked at as a matter of urgency ^jkb
— IT Help (@ITStatusSHU) February 4, 2014

Conversation

This is where the social comes in: social conversation, social engagement, social networking, social learning, social listening, social feedback. I think it is important to encourage new users of social tools to listen. From my own perspective this is how I developed my confidence to engage with other educators in these new forums. Reading blog posts and comments, TwitterChats, LinkedIn group discussions; each provided me with the opportunity to listen to conversations and to participate as and when I felt I wanted to.  

There are so many tools we can converse with online. Brian Solis and JESS3 capture this in the Conversation Prism. This is a visual map of the social media landscape. It’s an ongoing study in digital ethnography that tracks dominant and promising social networks and organizes them by how they’re used in everyday life.

My Edshelf collection of tools for COMMUNICATING