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