Reports on the morning sessions:
Instant Messaging and Txting
Some confusion about the different kinds of technology in this area. A lot of use for keeping in touch with friends and family. Use of chat rooms in learning environments – but often done at fixed times etc.
Power (i.e. electricity) came up again!
Is there a generation gap – how effectively can people multitask?
Linguistic issues – does txt degrade languge?
Virus issues
Security
SMS Etiquette?
Mobile devices (see previous posts)
Instant Messaging
Divide in the group – pro and against
Suggestion that there should be a separation of leisure and study use for IM
Material needs to be delivered in a platform independent way
Social and Learning interaction blurring. [this isn’t new – we always used to chat over coffee about problems with work when I was at University]
The type of institution is important – not so much need for this kind of technology if you have a compact campus [not sure about this either – do these institutions use email or internal post less?]
Students are arriving at University having already used this type of technology – so we should be providing support for this…
Do people have the will/interest [or time?] to engage with this. Especially lecturers
What about IPR? Already an issue with lectures being recorded, so what about comment and discussion.
Immature technology
Users still like email [not sure what this statement is based on – they have to use it, but I’m not clear they ‘like’ it]
Newsfeeds
Not a lot of people using Newsfeeds.
Some use of external feeds – e.g. BBC, RDN – for portals
Not much use for internal feeds. Some use for small groups, or people with blogs.
Could be used more internally – top down and bottom up. But possible need to editorial role.
Need to support publication tools and clients
Perhaps wise not to overplay the technology, but integrate [technology often at its best when the user doesn’t notice it]
Issue with management of content, rather than newsfeeds specifically
Personally, I do like email:
1) it stays quietly waiting on my IMAP server and in a local archive until I specifically decide to remove it – unlike IM, where once the alert window is closed, the most that you can hope for is to be able to retrieve it from a log somewhere.
2) Emails are legally admissible evidence in many countries, whereas IM arguably does not share this status. This makes it an excellent mechanism in the event that you need to CYA (cover your assets…)
3) Exposure via webmail and ssh interfaces means that it’s one of the few systems that I can use easily and fully from more or less anywhere.
The disadvantages are obvious enough not to mention, but these advantages are enough to make email a pretty important tool from my perspective. And, talking about the disadvantage of email, remove the president from my email address to reply… 🙂