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This week I would like to talk about microblogging, a modern form of communication that is popularized by Twitter. Microblogs are short messages, usually a sentence long. For Twitter, this is limited to only 140 characters. Most people are already accustomed to writing and reading short text messages, such as those sent through short message service (SMS) or instant messaging (IM). Microblogging is similar to these technologies, except that instead of one-to-one or one-to-many for chat, microblogs can potentially be read by anyone in the world. This makes microblogging a very powerful platform for communication.
Traditional blogs, like this one, consist of a larger body of text. Blogs are also not published too frequently; for me, this is once a week. Microblogs, on the other hand are usually published several times a day, sort of filling in the gap between blog postings. These microblogs, also known as “tweets” in Twitter lingo, are short messages about personal opinions, what a person is doing, upcoming events,… basically anything you like that fits within a line of text.
Many Universities around the world use microblogging, to supplement RSS, to notify students/staff and general public of events or news. It allows us to publish information without being intrusive like email spam. If you prefer email, you can still send and get tweet updates through email or mobile phone.
For CityU, we are gradually building up a community of twitter users. For example, the Communications and Public Relations Office (CPRO) has a “CityUHongKong” twitter feed for CityU announcements. Our Library has a “cityulib_eres” twitter feed as well. I, of course, have the “CityUCIO” twitter feed. In addition, many individual CityU staff and students have their personal twitter feeds that might also talk about CityU events.
I envision that more and more departments/units will be using microblogging in the future. To make it easier for our students and the general public to find our microblogs, I am proposing that we following a very simple convention - just include “#cityu #hk” within the line. This method of using hashs and tags together is called hashtagging. The individual tags are called hashtags. By following this simple convention, we can now search Twitter for “#cityu #hk” or simply “cityu hk” to get all updates related to CityU. You can extend the hashtags to, say “#cityu #hk #seminar” for seminar announcements. This way if someone searches for “hk seminars” they will also see our announcements. Hashtags will, of course, consume part of the 140 characters limitation. So they should be used sparingly.
If your tweet contains a link, a common practice is to compress a long URL into a short one to save on the number of characters. There are many tools that do this for free; I use bit.ly.
Besides Twitter, other Web 2.0 software also provide similar microblogging feature. For example, facebook and Google Talk both have a status line. Most Web 2.0 applications have connectors and interfaces that allows you to share information and synchronize updates. For example, every time I post something in this blog, Twitter gets an update. Every time I post something on facebook, my Twitter gets updated as well. This is done automatically through my blog and facebook.
I’m constantly fascinated by all the neat and advanced technologies our students are using day-to-day to stay in touch with their friends and classmates. Our channels of communication and teaching can greatly be improved if we use the same tools as they do. I hope to see more use of Web 2.0 throughout the University. If any department of administrative unit needs help in getting started, I will be more than happy to participate.
What’s New This Week:
Yesterday, with the help of EDO, we held our first CityU Blackboard User Group Meeting. Also present were friends from the HK Institute of Education as well as representatives from Blackboard and their local reseller BEENET. We heard talks from Dr. Hebe Wong on using a comment bank to give suggestions on English writing improvements and grading English with rubrics. Delegates from Blackboard/BEENET gave brief talk/demo on Blackboard Outcomes. We also had a brief sharing of good practices among all the participants. The effective use of a Learning Management System (LMS) and other supporting e-Learning tools can greatly enhance the learning experience of our students. I see the user group as a community of educators helping other educators to use these e-learning tools more effectively and efficiently as well as sharing their experiences and best practices. The group would probably only have time to meet once or twice within a semester. To keep the dialog going between meetings, Crusher Wong (EDO) has set up a Ning site (social network) for anyone in CityU who might be interested in e-learning to join. The Ning site is private. If you have not received an email invitation, please contact me or Crusher to get invited. I look forward to seeing you in Ning.
For the past 4 years, I’ve been organizing an annual CityU competition called the “eXtreme Web Designer Award” contest, nicknamed the “CityU Web Hacker” contest. This year is our 5th year. It is also a very special year because I invited students from other Universities to join as well as the Hong Kong Computer Society to sponsor the event. Each year we have a different theme; this year it is “cha siu bao” 叉燒包 – Chinese pork buns. In previous years, we had cats and dogs, turtle, butterfly, and goldfish.
The main objective of the competition is simple - to encourage students to learn and use professional Web development techniques through a fun competition.
The task is also simple, create a minimum of one Web page and make it professional quality. The judging panel then assesses the pages to see how well it follows various guidelines and best practices. The following are some of the things we are promoting:
If you are a student, please join, or encourage others to join. Deadline is 4th December at noon. More info can be found at the official 2009 eXtreme Web Designer Award website.
Last week I mentioned that students’ printing at CSC kills roughly 2 trees a week. I did not factor in all the printing that is done by the academic departments and administrative units. This can easily amount to a dozen large trees destroyed each week. The sad thing is that a vast majority of what is printed might be thrown out soon after a few weeks or even immediately after a meeting. But this does not have to be the case. There are many things we can do to eliminate or reduce printing. However, some of these do require changes in our reading or working habits. But saving the earth is well worth the effort, won’t you say?
“Softcopy Not Hardcopy”
Firstly, instead of giving students hardcopies of notes/presentations, consider emailing softcopies or PDFs. Its faster and doesn’t kill trees. It is also easier to read since you can zoom in and out as well as use search to locate information. It is simple to create a PDF file. Most of our computers are configured to allow you to “print” to a PDF file. If your computer isn’t, you can use one of many free software packages that produce PDF from different file formats. The easiest one to use is probably Google Docs. Just upload your file in whatever format and then download it again as PDF.
“Photocopy to PDF Not Paper”
Secondly, even if you don’t have the original softcopy of a document, you can still easily create PDFs. Most of the newer photocopy machines around CityU allow you to “photocopy” to a PDF file and then email the file to youself. Simply type in your email address. Some of our photocopiers even scan both sides of a paper at the same time. Using PDF not only saves paper but your time.
“Laptop and Desktop”
Thirdly, we routinely print stacks of papers, documents and minutes just for a 1 or 2 hour meeting. Many of these documents are confidential and have to be destroyed immediately after the meeting. This wastes paper and time. Why not prepare a laptop for each of the meeting participants with all the documents ready on the computer “desktop”. Once a meeting is over, just delete the file from the “desktop”; no shredding is needed.
“Circulate Links Not Paper”
Fourth, we routinely make photocopies of important documents to share with everyone in a department or an administrative unit. Instead, these documents can just as easily be stored permanently in a Web-based document management system. The advantage is that you only need to email a link to everyone and the document can be version-controlled so that people will always read the latest version each time. If needed, CSC can provide a general-purpose document management solution that is easy to use.
“Duplex”
Finally, if you must print, print both sides of the paper, i.e. duplex mode. Just by doing that will half our paper wastage.
This week I would like to share some personal thoughts on our email broadcasting system (EBS). Our current system has been serving us for close to a decade now. Originally, it was designed as a quick and easy tool for departments and units to broadcast important and critical messages to a wide audience, such as the entire department or even the entire University population. Probably because of its easy of use, our number of email messages sent through this system has steadily risen to the current day volume of roughly 1,000 to 2,000 per month, out of which 100 to 200 were broadcasted to the entire staff/student population. Some of these messages are routine announcements and reminders of seminars and other events, while others are important messages that require special attention. Due to the volume of broadcasted email, it has become increasing hard to separate the needle from the hay, impacting our overall e-productivity.
Email is a type of communication that we sometimes characterize as “push” communication; content is pushed onto us whether we want it or not. An analogy is radio. Once you tune into a particular station, you have no control of what comes over. If a radio station constantly broadcasts advertisements that you are not interested in, you would probably change radio station very quickly. Unfortunately, we cannot change our email address. What we can change is to give people more flexibility in the way they receive these messages.
Earlier this year, we added “My EBS Options” to allow you to subscribe/unsubscribe to email broadcast messages from selected groups of departments/units. However, only a few percentages of users actually used this feature. Most people were probably afraid of potentially missing important emails and did not bother to unsubscribe anything.
In the summer, we experimented with using a different channel of communication; a more flexible ‘alert’ based broadcast that allows you to configure exactly how you want to be notified if a particular event occurred. We then moved all the “Furniture” email broadcast messages to this new platform. This allowed people who are interested in recycling furniture to either (1) read furniture availability through the web, or (2) get email “alerts” either immediately, daily or weekly. This has tremendously improved our quality of email broadcast. Firstly, it reduced unsolicited email for a category of broadcast emails. Secondly, it gave control back to the user. User can now decide how to get information - through web, by alerts, and soon by RSS (a “pull” type communication).
With the success of the “Furniture” alert system, we are now looking into replacing the archaic EBS with a modern communication platform that puts control back to the users. We are thinking of calling this new platform “The CityU Community Bulletin Board” - similar in utility to common community bulletin boards that you might find in supermarkets and coffee shops.
What’s New This Week:
