Coordinating a geographically dispersed research project using social media

How to keep the conversation going

Michael PaskeviciusApril 1, 2011

A PROPOSAL FOR OPENNESS USING WORDPRESS

Part 1

by  andrew and hobbes 

Why are we here?

Schroeder, D. (2009). Web 2.0 Social Computing & Generation Y Action Group. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Available online: http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/wiki/?id=6004

We want to share ideas, stories, have discussions,

ask questions,

respond, etc.

But we do not want to

overload our already busy email inboxes

What social media tools do we have available to us?

How can we tie these social media tools together and keep a discussion going ?

Log in

List of contributors

Site search

New posts appear here

Tweets from Twitter

Site pages, for admin docs, images etc

http://ictaccessuse.wordpress.com/

You are an author of this blog• You can add entries to the project blog – they appear at the top of the site

home page

• In your post you can link to other websites on the web

• Your entries will be published and appear immediately on the blog

• You can upload images, audio, video, attachments and create surveys/polls

• You can comment on each others entries and reply

• You can entries using Facebook, Twitter or by email

• The project leads will be able to engage with you and can ask and respond to questions

Site view Authors view (logged in)

Authors Dashboard view (logged in)

Create a new post

Edit profile info, picture

Edit existing posts

Summary of blog activity

Post creation page – works much like editing text in MS Word and you can also add images and other media

When you are done,

hit publish!

When published your entry becomes part of the site

Interacting with posts

Share the post with your social network

on Twitter or Facebook. Or email the post directly to

someone

Leave a comment on the post for the author to view and

respond to

Let the author

know that you enjoyed

the post

You can also email in your posts

• If you are not into logging onto Wordpress.com and creating your posts you do have the option to email your entries directly to the blog

– You lose some of the creative flexibility you have inside the editor but it does work!

– This could be very useful when travelling, and perhaps you could even email posts in from your phone?

GETTING TO KNOW TWITTER Part 2

Twitter is a space for sharing ideas and connecting to people whose work you are interested in

Much like Facebook’s status update, you can share what you are doing or thinking, talk to someone or

share a web link Tweets that include the text #ICTAU are

linked to our website and also linked together by this unique hashtag

If you want to talk to someone use the @ character. mpaskevi is the username of

someone who I want to view my Tweet

This tweet also includes a link to a

YouTube video that I want to share

Because I used the #ICTAU hashtag my

tweet will also appear on our

website

USING URL SHORTENER’SPart 3

You only get 140 characters to use in tweets so if you want to share a link it needs to be shortened

This URL is 94 characters which

doesn’t leave much room for any textual

context!

Use bit.ly to shorten urls to a smaller length

Paste the long URL in the window at

http://bit.ly

This URL has been shortened to 20

characters, leaving 120 characters for my

message!

Ill use the shortened URL on Twitter so that

I can add more text into my tweet.

And the short URL will redirect anyone who clicks the link to the

longer URL

Bit.ly provides real-time analytics on the links you create. So

you can see how much interest your link has generated and where in the

world they came from

GETTING SIGNED UP WITH WORDPRESS TUTORIAL

Part 4

Sign up with Wordpress

Sign up for just a username

Enter user details

You will receive an activation email – click the activation link

Once your account is active – Now send Cheryl the email address you registered with

Once you have emailed us we will add you to the project blog. We will let you know when this is complete and then you can

login back at Wordpress.com

Under ‘My Account’ and ‘Edit my Profile’ you can add profile information and an image or feel free to remain

anonymous

Once logged in you will see across the top of the screen ‘My blog’ – this is where you can interact with the ‘ICT

Access and Use‘ project blog

On your ‘Dashboard’ you can see what has been happening on the blog and start contributing content

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 South Africa License. To view a copy of this license, visit

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/za/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco,

California, 94105, USA.

Prepared by: Michael Paskevicius Contact me: mike.vicious@gmail.com

OpenContent Directory: http://opencontent.uct.ac.zaOER UCT project blog: http://blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/oer-uctFollow us: http://twitter.com/openuct

Follow me: http://twitter.com/mpaskevi

Presentations: http://www.slideshare.net/mpaskevi