Kaltura on Blackboard at NUI Galway

I am very pleased to participate in this afternoon's webinar, hosted by Blackboard, on how we are using the Kaltura building block for video at NUI Galway.

Here are the slides that I'm going to be presenting with:



To find out more about Kaltura at NUI Galway, take a look at our Blackboard blog. Our guide for instructor users describing the Kaltura building block can be found on our Blackboard support site.


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Hiding behind my avatar

I joined twitter on 20th February 2009, three and a half years ago.

At the time I was very skeptical; I had no idea of the effect twitter would have on my professional life or the wealth of contacts I would build up in my Personal Learing Network (PLN).

Being a shy individual, an introvert in fact, I felt uncomfortable about using my own photograph for my profile image, so I chose an image that represented me: a cup of coffee. I do like good coffee, and sometimes tweet about it. The image certainly said something about me, as a person. I also felt somewhat protected, lurking on twitter, hiding behind my avatar, thinking I was unnoticed, anonymous in some way.

The cup of coffee lasted for about 6 months, until I met @vonprond at a conference in Galway. In fact, Ferdinand was the first person I followed on twitter. He commented that I looked completely unlike my image: he'd been expecting a large cup of coffee. I realised that my perceived anonymity did not exist and it would not be possible to separate my real life from my twitter existence. 

 

Still being a shy individual and uncomfortable using my own photograph, I created an avatar representing myself using the Mad Men Yourself avatar generator. After a new haircut, this was further updated to my current image, which I've used for about 2 years.

I have been told that I look a little bit like my twitter image (or should that be the other way round?). I have even been recognised at conferences, twice. But it's clear that most people don't recognise me when they meet me in real life. I'm fairly comfortable with that. But, I wonder if I'm still hinding behind the avatar and is it prohibiting me from a deeper engagement with my PLN when I meet them in real life? 

In some sense, my twitter persona is an alter-ego of myself. She says things in public that I would never say in a room full of people.

In the last year, or so, I've noticed more of my PLN using photos of themselves, and I'm wondering if it's time to change?  

There's another issue. Having used this image for about 2 years, it has now become my "brand". The image, in itself, is recognisable to my followers, even if they don't associate it with the real-life me. Would I be wise to change it now?

And so, dear PLN, I put the question to you. Should I change my profile pic to a real image of myself, or not? Let me know what you think. 

Related Post: I got a big response to this article and have written a follow-up, where I explain why I decided not to change my avatar.

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Welcome to the #cel263 class of 2012

This afternoon I am meeting with our new intake of academic staff on the Learning Technologies module. It looks like we have a great group of people this year and I'm looking forward to working with them to explore their use of technologies in teaching and learning.

This afternoon we'll be introducing ourselves and I'll run through the structure of the module - 7 workshops, each addressing a different theme. Over the next few months we hope to introduce participants to some new technologies and new ways to use those technologies to support teaching.

Today we'll also take a look at some social networking. Fiona will introduce an activity based around social bookmarking, and then we're going to have some fun using twitter. We're using the hashtag #cel263, so please keep up with participants by following the tag, and join in the conversation.

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Embedded twitter timelines in Blackboard

This week, I've been preparing for the start of our Learning Technologies module - offered to academic staff as part of our Higher Diploma in Academic Practice at NUI Galway. I have blogged, in the past, about the wonderful work carried out by participants on the module, and we have done some initial investigations into the longer term impact of the module.

Using the old twitter embed code

Twitter is just one of the many tools we use as part of the module, both to support communication between participants, and for them to reflect on how they might make use of it in their own teaching practice. Since we also use Blackboard as our VLE, it's useful to bring the course twitter feed into the Blackboard course, to help link various strands together.

In the past, embedding a twitter feed was not straightforward, but was certainly possible. A quick google search would bring up instructions, and allowed us to produce some nice results (see image).

So, I was really delighted to see that just last Friday, Twitter have announced a new way to embed timelines, making it easier to embed a public twitter stream into a webpage. The old embed codes will no longer work from March 2013.




Since I was already working on my Blackboard course for the current year, I thought I'd give it a try.

Step 1: When logged into twitter.com, go to your settings page and select Widgets from the left menu bar.

Step 2: Click Create New, to create and configure a new timeline widget.

Step 3: Choose a timeline source. In my case, I want to search for course related tweets, using the #cel263 tag. I leave everything else at the defaults. The preview is looking good so far!

Step 4: List the domains where this widget will be embedded. I use the domain for this blog, and also the domain for blackboard (which is on a secure server).

Step 5: Click on Create widget. Success, my widget has been created and I just have to copy the embed code!

Step 6: Now, in my Blackboard course, I create a new item and paste the embed code into it. I'm done!

Except that this wasn't really what I was expecting...a rather disappointing "Tweets about..." link.

Clicking on the link will open a new page, but produces a Blackboard error message.

It's not particularly elegant!

When I first encountered the problem, I tweeted about it. I've had a couple of replies from other people experiencing the same issue.

Anybody else having problems with new twitter embedded timelines in Blackboard? bit.ly/OmRuEi
— Sharon Flynn (@sharonlflynn) September 6, 2012

I also posted on the Official Timeline Questions blog, but to date have seen no reply.

Has anybody figured this out? Please let me know. For the moment, I'm sticking with the old embed code.

21 September 2012: Update

Hooray! The embedded twitter widget is now working for me. The problem, it appears, was with secure sites (https) but a fix has been implemented. Now, what I see when I insert the code is much, much nicer.

31 January 2013: Update

In response to a couple of queries, I didn't implement the fix, I presume Twitter did. The one change I did make in the narrative above is in the list of domains at step 4. This now looks like:

I don't know how important the last *.blackboard.com is, but it might make all the difference!


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