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Presentations from NG Conference 200911 September 2009Here's a collection of the various presentations and materials from the Northern Grid Conference 2009. Keynote - Translating Policy Into Practice Twitter - How to Have a Positive Twitter Experience19 August 2009
So, what is Twitter? "Twitter is not chat" "Twitter is the largest staffroom in the world" www.Twitter.com is a social network service - currently free to join.
‘What are you doing?’ is the question when you log in to your Twitter account and whilst some ‘tweeters’ may post; ‘Watching TV’ or ‘Having a beer with friends’ There can be something almost ‘arty’ about these notes on the mundanity of our modern existence and there are some celebrities on Twitter who offer interesting insights into their day to day lives. Those who follow Stephen Fry gain a personal and almost intimate sense of his perspective and views on events in the world as they happen. For many of us, this is not the reason we use Twitter and prefer to use Twitter to share information, ideas and experiences of direct relevance to our work. The following tweet exemplifies the kind of information that appears in the @northerngrid timeline
The tweet explained
140 characters
The restriction of 140 characters mean that users need to be brief and clear in their tweets and so tend to reference websites, blogs etc. where more information, extended conversations and exchanges can take place. Twitter is a useful place to:
Surely posting web links will use almost all of the characters available won’t it? Most people use Redirect Urls to shorten web links eg http://bit.ly
You need to Follow and have Followers
Followers It may seem a little self indulgent to be concerned about followers – and there are some people who see this as a measure of their worth and strive for thousands of followers. The truth is, it’s relatively easy to use 3rd party Twitter applications to automate follows and followers and within a short period of time you can appear to be very busy and important – without tweeting a thing. In terms of your PLN (personal learning network), followers are important as they will be sharing resources with you and sharing your tweets with their followers too. With a little effort it’s possible to identify people who will be genuinely useful to you, and by retweeting their tweets, you in turn will be useful to your followers and members of your PLN. (You don’t have to follow everyone who follows you. Many will be autofollows and will have little or no idea of your interests or the contents of your tweets. After a while you’ll be able to form a view of who to follow – usually those who have a genuine interest in education are a fairly safe bet) Who to Follow
The following are focused around education, online learning and technology to support learners. @northerngrid (Northern Grid) @stla (South Tyneside LA) @simfin (Simon Finch) @The_NEN (The National Education Network)
(You can stop following anyone easily by selecting ‘Remove’ and this is very unlikely to cause any offence to the person or organisation you were following)
As you start to follow people you feel will be useful you can check who they’re following and their followers and select more people to follow based on a reasonable assumption that they’re probably interested in the same things as you. There is an element of trial and error but as it is easy to unfollow people who are ‘off topic’ you shouldn’t be put off if you follow the ‘wrong’ people.
I hate posting pictures of myself – do I have to? You should choose an appropriate avatar – anything is better than the default Twitter image:
Bio Write a meaningful Bio so people get a sense of your interests (and value!) ‘Educator, Science teacher, ICT Consultant, Author and Web2.0 / Interactive Whiteboard Trainer. Also general tech geek
Web
It also helps if you can include a link to your blog or website. If you don’t have your own then providing the url of your school website is also a good way of helping others learn a little more about you Your tweets
I link therefore I am
And you could ofcourse direct your tweet at one or more people simply by listing them in your tweet – each with an @ symbol before their names.
(some people prefer to use ‘via’ rather than RT – both work in the same way and it is polite to attribute tweets to the person who shared them with you). Retweeting is a good way to make yourself useful to others and good way to make yourself known even if you feel you have nothing to tweet of your own.
This all seems a bit labour intensive and Twitter.com seems to have few features to do these things.
True – and that’s why most people use 3rd party Twitter apps to manage their Twitter accounts. The following link contains a list of the 20 Most Popular Twitter Apps (August 09). You can see which app people are using to tweet in their tweets eg TweetDeck
The key benefits of using an app on your desktop include managing multiple accounts (your personal account and that of your school for example), organising followers into groups, saving searches so you can monitor tweets around a theme or conference and upload images and shortened links with greater ease. Why do some people use # in their tweets?
If you use # with a word it can become a common agreed convention for a specific topic. For example we used #ngconf09 for the Northern Grid conference. This means that searching for conversations and information about the conference can be searched for more efficiently. Without the # naming convention some people may have used other words eg northerngrid, nthgrid, ngconference etc and these would not then appear in a single search and their comments would be missed by some people. At the time of writing there has been a lot of discussion and activity on Twitter around the importance of the NHS and people have used #welovetheNHS as a common naming convention. Further reading/browsing Twitter Tips for Teachers & Educators Perhaps one of the reasons why Twitter has become so popular as a vehicle for sharing ideas and providing mutual support is the huge range of practical and sometimes amusing 3rd party apps available for people to use. NG Awards & Conference 200927 June 2009
Click for more information about the winners
Conference FeedbackThis year we took advantage of the technology and invited people to contribute to the conference by Twitter. This proved an excellent way for delegates to share their thoughts and for those not able to be there in person to follow what was happening. 
We also recieved very positive feedback on the day!
VideosVideos from the Northern Grid Conference 2009 Sharing Success - Student Keynote Session
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Download | Zip File of the Keynote Prezi Presentation (Windows) |
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Download | Zip File of the Keynote Prezi Presentation (Mac) |
| View Website | The accompanying web-based presentation to the keynote |
National & Regional E-Safety Resources
A look at the various national and regional E-Safety resources available.
Download the presentation
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Download | Powerpoint presentation |
A Persuasive Argument
A Project by John Bowes, Hedworthfield Primary School, about how they raised the profile of persuasive writing.
Download the presentation
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Download | Powerpoint Presentation |
Year 3 Meet The Romans
A look at a successful Video Conferencing project involving Throston School and Roman History.
Download the presentation
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Download | Powerpoint Presentation |
NG Video Conferencing Projects
A look at some of the Video Conferencing Projects Northern Grid has been involved with.
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Download | Powerpoint Presentation |
Workshop - Personal E-Safety for Adults Who Work With Children
An overview of the the challenges faced by adults who work with children in a digital world.
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Download | Workshop Adobe PDF Document |
Also labeled: News 
And it’s one of 3 pieces of information (avatar, bio and follow/follower/tweet count) that people will look at when deciding whether to follow you or not.
’ – tells us a lot more than ‘love cooking, cycling and looking for answers’
The Northern Grid Awards Ceremony and Conference 2009 held on the 25th till the 26th June at the Gosforth Park Marriott was a huge success!
