At the time of writing (15th July 2009, 13:07) we have 99 twitter followers, ok we’re no Stephen Fry! I actually find it quite flattering that 99 people want to listen to what we have to say, we think that some of it quite interesting. There is a lot of debate about twitter and its merits, how to use it, business model etc. I’ve been interested to watch how the online community has used Twitter in so many different ways and shaped it to fit their needs. Already we are seeing Twitter spam, Twitter SEO and Twitter lead finding services all of which have followed the trends of previous online services.

Personally I’ve got a twitter fon on my iphone and have found it be really useful for quickly catching up on news whilst on the move and I’ve been able to communicate with people who normally I would never get the chance to. Bradly Wiggins is an english cyclist currently doing extremely well in the Tour De France who has replied to his following that his messages keep him going. Mark Beaumont is an adventure cyclist who is using twitter to keep in touch with his followers and I’m sure from his perspective its a lot easier than starting up the laptop and typing in a long form email.

From a learning perspective there has been quite a debate about how it can be used and whether it is of any use at all. In the past few days this has been highlighted further by the publication of sections of a report by an Intern at Morgan Stanley about how teenagers use Twitter. The FT and the Guardian both ran the piece as lead articles and its generated quite a buzz on the internet news boards. I’m not sure what it tells us about the use of twitter in learning!

Interestingly there are people using Twitter with young people and with schools how it can be used in education and training. I was preparing for a speaking event on game based learning last week when I came across a research video from UTC Dallas on Twitter in the classroom. I’ve also found that the University of Minnesota are also using social media and twitter in the classroom. Both videos show how they are using twitter and social networks to increase the contributions made within the classroom. As one teacher says in the video “If you are not engaging with the call you might as well hit a brick wall.” They’ll be lots more debate on the merits of twitter, if you are interested then these 2 videos might just provide a starting point.

At the E2BN conference Twitter and Twitterfall was used to great effect to capture questions from the floor during the seminars, ok you needed a mobile device with twitter but it allowed for a much more open question and answer flow. This was an event largely attended by teachers and I was amazed by the sheer numbers who were contributing. I’ll certainly be using twitter fall in future presentations alongside the traditional question and answer sessions.

I’d noticed that there had not been much blogging activity in the past few weeks. This is due to a combination of holiday, working on projects and getting our games based learning event arranged. I’ve been using Twitter to post updates as I’ve got twitterfone on my phone which has proved to be really useful. I’ve seen extended uses for twitter especially when used on a mobile device. I think it would be great to use when travelling so that you can keep people up to date with where are you and what you are up to. It has come quite a way since I used a fax machine to send back monthly updates. I’ve experimented using Twitter feeds with a client on a couple of occasions and it was useful when we were both out of office.

At the next e-learning forum event I want to try a twitter feed to see how whether it will be used.

Over the past month I’ve seen some really interesting stuff from the new UK edition of wired magazine to finally getting the time to read a TLRP paper on Education 2.0?

Reading other people’s blog’s is always interesting and I read about a great presentation device on Clive Shepherd’s Blog - http://prezi.com/ - take a look at this clever presentation device.

http://www.readthewords.com/ is another fave site at the moment that we’ve come across. It is well worth a look.

…also we are planning to be at http://conference.e2bn.org/ so feel free to come and say hi.

we are on twitter (who isn’t?). We had a look at twitter last year, tried a few things out and didn’t really return to it until recently. We’ve been interested in the apps that have been created to support it.

twitterfon for the iphone really extends twitter and has made it a very appealing app when one the move. Tweet feeds and widgets for your own website also have extended the twitter reach.

We’ve been posting all kinds of ‘tweets’ from who’s going the shop to interesting things we’ve found on the web and at exhibitions. We are looking to see how we might be able to use it at the next elearning forum.

You can follow us at www.twitter.com/realprojects

In the latest Naace newsletter there is an article about Futurelab coordinating a games and learning research project.

“Futurelab has been appointed as the UK National Coordinator for a pan-European study of the use of computer and video games in schools. Our Games and Learning project is a programme of research, events and planned publications intended to stimulate discussion and the development of new intelligence.

The overall aim is to demonstrate what challenges and opportunities have emerged from debates and developments in this field to date, and to identify practical actions and interventions to be taken forwards.”

We’ve been in touch with Futurelab as this is something that Real Projects would like to be involved in. At the moment we don’t have much more information than what we have posted on the blog! We’ll be letting futurelab know about the games degree link up and also our work with games based learning. As we find out more we will let you know.

p.s. I still can’t get twitter to work via my mobile phone…anyone got any ideas?

we’ve just started to update our twitter account….again. We opened the account last year but didn’t really do much with it. We are going to integrate it into the site as an addition to our news and blog just so that any of us can post to it with news of what we are up to.

I’ve not been able to update via SMS yet but I’m hopeful that we’ll get that working at some point. IT would be excellent to be able to update via SMS and provide more remote updates on what is happening at RP.

At this moment in time we are taking some time to look at the practical uses of it….its quite fun and we are being followed by a few people at the moment. You can follow us at www.twitter.com/realprojects