7 Habits of Highly Effective Online Discussion Participants

1. Use the subject line
2. Quote the other participants
3. Check in (nearly) every day
4. Use highlighting & lists for easy reading
5. Use links
6. Use Right Mouse Click
7. Post in the right place

1. Use the subject line
Be descriptive in your subject line. It should be an accurate summary of your post. If you are replying to someone else’s post, also adjust the subject line. “Re: Topic 1” tells others nothing new, but “Re: Topic 1 / My thought” does.

2. Quote the other participants
Quote the particular phrase or part of the post that you are responding to by saying for example: John posted: “Bla-di-blah” and I agree with him because…
By saying only “I agree with John”, you will make the other participants browse through 50 of John’s posts to find out what you are agreeing with.

3. Check in (nearly) every day
It is a good habit to check into the online discussion on a regular basis, particularly if a discussion is only designed to run for a couple of days. For instance, at the beginning and end of a working day, 15 minutes each time. This will help you keep up with what’s happening online. Log in only once a week and you may end up with a MMM (Multiple Message Mountain).

4. Use highlighting & lists for easy reading
You’ve probably experienced that reading from a screen is more tiring and difficult than reading from paper. Spare yourself and your fellow participants the headache, and highlight key phrases & keywords by making them bold. If you are making a number of points, then order them in a list. This will make it easier for others to scan your messages.

5. Use links
You will undoubtedly run across a web page, blog post or article that you want to share with others. Avoid copying and pasting entire sections into your post. Quite apart from the copyright issues, it seems unfair to add to your fellow participants reading load. Instead quote or paraphrase the pertinent parts, relate why you think it is significant or useful and include a link to the original resource.

6. Use Right Mouse Click
If someone has included a link in their post, click on the link with your right mouse button and select the option Open Link in New Window. This will open the link in a new browser window and give you continued access to the discussion forum in the existing window. In newer internet browsers, you can choose to Open Link in New Tab.

7. Post in the right place
Make sure that the forum or discussion thread you are posting to, is the correct place for your post. If it is a social enquiry, it should go in the Social Forum, if it is a request for help, the Help Forum. If it is a reply but the messages have gone a bit off-topic, you may want to start a new topic.

Connected learning

First, I want to make visible how much I’m learning from being connected. The last 24 hours is a prime example. Twitter’s replies function is still down, so last night I went on Plurk and in a few hours playing with the other eduTwitter immigrants, we learned its technicalities but also began thinking about its limitations, variations in microblogging and how interface differences changed our interactions. This morning I’ve spent one hour creating, editing and embedding our institution’s Wikipedia page and had to learn to create pages, create categories, learn a different wiki syntax. I can’t get over how many skills and insights you pick up and how fast, when you’re a connected learner.

Inspiration

My second reason is the blogging blues which hit me earlier this year. For me it’s easier to blog about the simple things like my Moodle Wishlists. Listing what I’ve learned in a week will be straightforward, easy and motivating. Hopefully it’ll give me the inspiration to tackle the other edu-balls-of-yarn in my head.

My blog is built around the metaphor of the kiwi bach which sits between the stable land and the changing sea. Educational technologists (technology intgrators, e-learning advisors, whatever the term) seem to fulfill much the same role, sitting on the boundary between the stable field of education and the tempestuous  technology. So in that vein, I guess this is the start of my beachcombing.

First beachcombings already in draft.

Unfortunately it kept echoing, even with echo regulation on, sometimes hearing yourself back a minute and a half later. And the others’ volumes kept alternating between crystal clear and deathly whispers. Predictably bad when people were talking at the same time. We concurred that Tokbox could really use a chat function, to exchange advice about improving settings when sound is off. Now we were polluting the twitter-stream (sorry tweets). As the Aussies were chatting happily, Amanda and I left early.

Simon B said”different – random strangers on a video call”. To me being on Tokbox tonight was reminiscent of when you were 11 and your parents took you to an acquaintance’s house on a Saturday evening. You’d be introduced to their children and expected to just get on with it. Like then, there were some initial moments of just staring at each other. Then a little bit of shy laughter, followed by more staring. But once you discovered your shared interest (Lego back then, now Ed Tech – still playing with toys) the ice was broken and you felt totally comfortable with the others, to the point that you were happy to make a fool of yourself.

Very lo-tech communication

I’d be up for trying out some more tools across the Tasman. Tools Tuesday anyone?

All that is a long-winded way of saying:

thanx/@twitku/575 xj

Twitter is what you make it through sensible stalking. Who you are following and who is following you is critical to the quality of your Twitter experience.

Choose people who are exploring your field of interest (Wenger’s domain?) and pertinent thoughts, tools & technologies will come flying at you at the speed of light. You’ll make new contacts through them and hear just-in-time when events (webcasts, live conferences, or f2f conferences) are happening. It’s even possible to attend F2F conferences vicariously, as the edutwitterers discovered with this weekend’s Educon2.0. Additionally your followers are an informed peer group that can provide insightful answers to your questions.

But stalk sensibly, or end up reading a lot of “what i’m having for breakfast” tweets.

To find out who is tweeting about your interests, use a Twitter search engine like Terraminds.

This is a list of tools, sites and extensions I currently use two or more times per week. And next year around this time (and if I remember) I’ll post another list and compare the two. It should make an interesting experiment.

• Edublogs
• Skype
• MSN Messenger
• Google Search
• Google Desktop
• Bloglines
• Zotero
• Google News
• Google Docs
• Firefox
• Foxmarks
• Google Sync
• Del.icio.us
• PBWiki
• Flickr
• Ning
• Wimba
• Audacity
• Adobe Fireworks
• Adobe Flash
• SnagIt
• Captivate
• Mindomo
• iTunes
• Twitter
• Twitbin
• YouTube
• Last.fm
• knowledgeGarden (USQ)
• Wikipedia
• Amazon
• Bookdepository.co.uk
• Thunderbird
• Gmail
• Outlook

• 3 Months ago – the author of a book I’ve read many times and a blog that I follow weekly. So disappointed I didn’t get to meet him in person when he was in New Zealand in 2006. Will never get that chance again.

• 1 Month ago (post-Twitter) – a fellow Twitterer whose daily tweets on ed tech are always interesting. I now also know what his kids are up to.

• Today – someone I’ve collaborated with on a wiki.

Tomorrow Will is presenting to a large group of teachers and wants them to “walk away understanding the power of connections that can reach far beyond the classroom.” To this end he has asked his network to chip in and leave their best tip on a wiki. Read about it on Weblogg-ed and leave your bit.

17.38 – Oh wait, just saw that I can click to talk, but can also click to go to a YackPack WalkieTalkie web channel page that was ‘automagically’ created.

PBwiki offers YackPack as free plug-in, no messing around with code, just click the Insert Plugin button when you Edit page. Great for working together on a wiki. You can see when your collaborators are online and yack with them. I have added a Recent visitors plug-in as well, so I can see not only how many but who’s online.

Well it turns out that not only is it educational, it is addictive. How? In a variety of ways. For instance by helping me find neat tools as today I discovered 3 new tools and Adobe AIR in the space of an hour.

This can happen directly and indirectly.

First an example of the indirect way. Will Richardson (willrich45 on Twitter) is one of my fav bloggers and so one of the people I started following on Twitter rightaway. His tweets appear in my Twitter list. And when the following 3 messages cropped up in a short time, it piqued my interest…

willrich45 (@ – W): Wow…only 27 tabs open in Firefox…slow day! 1H Ago

 

willrich45 (@ – W): @tgelston Nope…what is it? 56M Ago

 

willrich45 (@ – W): @tgelston Thanks for the link…the offline reading looks great! 15M Ago

So I decided to visit the other side of the conversation whichWill Richardson was having with tgelston. Now tgelston is not one of the people I’m following, but I can go and have a look at his tweets:

@willrich45 something between tabs and bookmarks about 1 hour ago from im in reply to willrich45

@willrich45 http://tinyurl.com/yrlqrj about 1 hour ago from im in reply to willrich45

This tinyurl led me to tool no. 1: Read It Later, a promising extension for Firefox which allows you to save pages of interest to read later. It eliminates cluttering of bookmarks with sites that are merely of a one-time interest..

A more direct route to a new tool is the imprint that most tools leave within a Tweet,  as in this Tweet from kboutelle

@ATC_tobias FYI – if you don’t already know, Moodle Meet times are CST. 8 minutes ago from twhirl in reply to ATC_tobias

From thwirl? Never heard of it. So I clicked on the link and discovered tool no.2 Thwirl which is a twitter desktop client based on the Adobe AIR platform.

And sometimes it gets even more direct, when someone simply posts a Tweet about a tool they like:

NancyWhite (@ – W): I find twits much easier to read in Snitter – love the images. They allow me to visually scan for people. 1H Ago

And that led me to tool no. 3, Snitter is “Snook’s Twitter”: an Adobe AIR-powered application for twittering. (The tag line is “I can’t believe it’s not Twitter”, har har.)

And the last two apps make mention of being Adobe AIR-powered, another thing I had not heard of until today, but which appears to approach an Apple-like desktop with widgets. This will warrant a closer look…

3 tools and Adobe Air in under an hour. Thru Twitter I’m keeping my finger on the techno-pulse…

Have decided to name my del.icio.us widget Flotsam. Not in the sense of junk, rather “fragments of many things.”