Twelve people from six HEIs attended the sigma North West and North Wales Hub event Creating and maintaining a social media presence at Liverpool John Moores University on Friday 20 June. Appropriately the event had a hashtag #ljmutwt.
Alex Spiers, @alexgspiers, Learning Technology Developer, LJMU, opened proceedings with Getting to grips with the technology helping participants, many of them novices, better understand how to use Twitter:
- setting up an account
- finding or creating interesting and useful content
- privacy
- minimising spam and trolling, … .
This was a highly interactive session lasting until lunch time. Some of the novices present used their favourite mobile device to send their first ever tweet! Alex’s presentation can be found on Slideshare (http://www.slideshare.net/alextronic/an-introduction-to-twitter-in-higher-education).
In the afternoon, Janette Matthews, @matthews_jb , Pedagogic Project Officer, Loughborough University explained how Using the sigma network website and the associated Jiscmail list provide an indispensable means of communication amongst mathematics and statistics support practitioners. The presentation slides can be accessed here.
Finally,
- Mark Feltham, LJMU @MarkFeltham666
- Peter Rowlett, Nottingham Trent University @peterrowlett
spoke about their experience using Facebook and Twitter respectively in learning and teaching.
Hopefully most of those attending, not only the novices, took away something from the day so thanks are due to everyone involved, especially the presenters who created an air of excitement about the potential of social media in learning and teaching.
Leslie Fletcher @LRFletcher43 who still has a lot to learn about Twitter, and still more about Facebook!