To learn more about the project, you can go to the main project website, or go directly to the learning events for 2015. There will be a total of 10 learning events during the project. We’ll launch the events and tweet them out starting this Sunday afternoon. Each learning event should take about one week to consider, make, share, and connect with others.
This week is our slow start to the project. We’re using this week to get people started using Twitter, connect to the community, and kick the tires on the whole experience. To that end, we’ve got a couple of things we’d like you to do this week as we prepare to get started next week.
Get Twitter up and running
Many of our participants have never used Twitter before. We think that’s great and we’re ready to help you play with this social media tool. We’ve developed and shared a Twitter Tutorials page on the project website. Please go and review the content.
As you develop your Twitter account, we want you to put some thought into what you plan on using the account for, and what Identity you want to portray in this online social environment. To help explain these issues, I recorded a section of my graduate class last night to discuss Twitter, identity, and their work in the #WalkMyWorld project. You can review the video below.
I don’t expect you to review the hour long recording of class. The condensed information reveals the following points:
- Twitter is an online social networking service that enables users to send 140 character messages called “tweets.”
- There are specific elements of a tweet that you will need to learn how to read to make sense of, and use Twitter. More about the anatomy of the tweet is found on the Twitter Tutorials page.
- To make sense of Twitter, I compare it to email as a communication tool. Please see the video to see how.
- As you develop your Twitter account, you’ll want to consider what identities you want to promote, or build with your usage. More on this in the video.
- Finally, I describe the tools and behaviors I use as I interact on Twitter. I also get everyone started with their first tweets.
Pin Yourself to the Map
We’ll use some mapping, and geolocation during the project. We’re interested in sharing with others our locations as we share a walk in our world with others. If you’re interested and you’d like to play with maps as well, please review this tutorial. To look at the map and see where everyone is located…please review this page.
Privacy and Research Guidelines
Yes, this is an open learning, and open research project. That being said, we’re tremendously concerned about online privacy, rights and security. If you regularly follow my work, or this blog, you know how important these issues are to me specifically.
We think it is important that you understand your rights and privileges as we work openly in this online space. As a result, we have developed our Privacy and Research Guidelines. I’d like you all to read and review it. If you see things that are not acceptable to you…awesome. Please ping me or the other organizers and let’s do something about it.
Have FUN!!!
The last thing I want you to do this week before we really get started is have fun. Get Twitter up and running. Send out a tweet to the #WalkMyWorld community introducing yourself. Say hello to others with a favorite or retweet their content. Share a photo, or just check out what others are sharing. This is the time to play, experiment, and make yourselves comfortable.
We’ve got a lot of great people ready, willing, and able to help out. Please reach out and connect to others for support.
Welcome to your new personal learning network. 🙂
Image CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Penn State Special Collection
