As some educators are discovering, Twitter allows them to network and learn from like-minded educators from different parts of the world. That is a very powerful experience!

I have used blogs in my ICT classes for several semesters. I have experimented with both individual and group-owned blogs. While this promotes ownership, it also requires initial set up and continued maintenance of the blogs. I will definitely use group blogs again for the ICT course but am hesitant to use it for the EP2 course as the emphasis is not technology-mediated pedagogies.

I am experimenting with the shoutbox to see if it is a viable one-minute paper platform. I had thought of Twitter, but that would require the same ownership and set up elements.

The shoutbox, despite its flaws, is a convenient one-stop shop to drop a quick thought. I think that it will be good for quick IM style chats.

I just saw your twitter updates here by the side… my deepest condolences to you, your wife and your family.

I’ve been using shoutboxes too, in my blogs and webpages where I’d like to gather feedback from the readers. It seems like many of my friends prefer to write in the shoutboxes instead of leaving comments in each entry! Mine are usually not very active as my pages don’t have many readers, but it is always interesting to see what your friends or other readers got to say about what you’ve written.

In my opinion, the shoutbox has limitations like word limit (I do have a bad habit of getting too long-winded at times) and like you’ve mentioned, the updates get “scrolled away” very quickly. Thus it may not be “convenient” to use it as a form of communication among so many of us. Often I attempt to see my peers’ responses, only to be lost scrolling through the pages and pages of one-liners.

I was thinking of some alternative ways, and one of them is to have a blog with one entry for per session, and everyone of us can leave our “take home” messages as comments in each session’s entry. This way we can easily see and share all the comments in one page.

Well, just sharing my humble opinion. (^_^)v

Vernice

Guess what? I’ve got my hands on the zyrex classmate today! It’s a 2-day loan and I’m playing with it now. The batt life is really a concern though. Tell you more offline…

It’s not just a mindset shift among users though. There also needs to be a paradigm shift in the business practices of publishers, media companies and the like.