Digital Directions

#FollowFriday - HEA Tweets

After the last few posts about law firms and law schools who tweet, I thought I'd look around and give a #FollowFriday shout to fellow HEA groups and centres who tweet.  This is in recognition and support of the new @HEA_UKCLE tweets from the UK Centre for Legal Education that started life last week!

If you want to follow the @HEA_UKCLE tweets, then you need to sign up to a twitter account first.  It will contain news, events, reminders, discussions with other academics, law firms, HEA centres and whatever can be said in 140 characters or less!

@hea_ukcle

"UK Centre for Legal Education, a subject centre of the Higher Education Academy".

I have also created a longer list of HEA groups and subject centres that tweet - additions are most welcome, although I think I've got most of them!

The groups below get a mention for this week's #FollowFriday.  There are plenty more, so as usual I will save some for a future #FF:

@hea_EvidenceNet

"A free, open-access resource from the Higher Education Academy to promote and support the use of evidence in higher education learning and teaching."  Lots of information about events and how you can contribute your case studies.

@escalatesc

"The Higher Education Academy Education Subject Centre" for advanced learning and teaching in education.  Includes forthcoming events and news of their latest resources and project news.

@AcademyWales

"News, events and funding opportunities from the Higher Education Academy in Wales."

@AcademyScotland

"News, events and funding opportunities from the Higher Education Academy in Scotland."

@ukoer

"Official Tweets from the JISC/Academy UKOER programme."  Useful updates and links for those interested in Open Education Resource (OER) developments across all subject areas.

@HEAcademy

"Enhancing the student learning experience."  Information on all kinds of events, and currently providing useful updates for the forthcoming HEA conference along with the hashtag for this event #heaconf10 taking place at the University of Hertfordshire on 22-23 June 2010.

Is Google making us stupid?!

Is Google making us stupid?  Apparently the stakeholders, mostly say no...

The Out of the Jungle blog alerted me to a recent publication from the Pew Internet & American Life Project:

Respondents to the fourth "Future of the Internet" survey, conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center, were asked to consider the future of the internet-connected world between now and 2020 and the likely innovation that will occur. The survey required them to assess 10 different "tension pairs" - each pair offering two different 2020 scenarios with the same overall theme and opposite outcomes - and to select the one most likely choice of two statements. Although a wide range of opinion from experts, organizations, and interested institutions was sought, this survey, fielded from Dec. 2, 2009 to Jan. 11, 2010, should not be taken as a representative canvassing of internet experts. By design, the survey was an "opt in," self-selecting effort.

The question was first asked by Nicholas Carr in 2008¹: "Is Google Making us Stupid?" Carr argued that the ease of online searching and distractions of browsing through the web were possibly limiting his capacity to concentrate. "I'm not thinking the way I used to," he wrote, in part because he is becoming a skimming, browsing reader, rather than a deep and engaged reader. "The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author's words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas.... If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with ‘content,' we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture."

Many of the respondents to the survey were indeed Internet experts, and perhaps their responses are more likely to be positive towards the future use of the Internet.

Google, and other online tools, can lead users to be more informed, but perhaps not more intelligent.  I was particularly struck by one quote, which lead me to think about how students are using Google for legal and scholarly research:

"Google will make us stupid and intelligent at the same time. In the future, we will live in a transparent 3D mobile media cloud that surrounds us everywhere. In this cloud, we will use intelligent machines, to whom we delegate both simple and complex tasks. Therefore, we will lose the skills we needed in the old days (e.g., reading paper maps while driving a car). But we will gain the skill to make better choices (e.g., knowing to choose the mortgage that is best for you instead of best for the bank). All in all, I think the gains outweigh the losses." -- Marcel Bullinga, Dutch Futurist at futurecheck.com

An optimistic view, but nevertheless a note of caution.  The other quotes available at Pew are worth a read too.

#FollowFriday - UK Law Schools that Tweet

After my post about law firms who tweet, I thought I'd look around for more law schools who tweet.  After a bit of a hit-and-miss with google, I found one or two law schools who were 'listed' by other tweeps - this is a convenient way of tagging or categorising the feeds you follow.

The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa twitter page has a list with 131 law schools, some of which are in the UK, likewise the University of Washington has a list of 66 law schools,

I have therefore created my own list of UK Law Schools that tweet - but please don't expect it to be thoroughly comprehensive and exhaustive as I have 16 at the moment - additions are most welcome!

The most recent posts (not necessarily the most active of law schools who tweet) therefore deserve a mention for #FollowFriday.  There are plenty more, so I will save some for a future #FF:

@QMULSchoolofLaw

"The latest news and events from the School of Law at Queen Mary, University of London".  Regular tweets with news, updates and bit.ly links to further information on QMUL's site.

@ALSWestminster

"Department of Advanced Legal Studies in the School of Law at the University of Westminster".  This comprises automatic feeds directly from their blog alswestminster.blogspot.com and nothing much else.

@mmu_law

"One of the UK's largest Law School's with a reputation for delivering top quality legal education".  Their tweets are varied and interesting with student advice, news and a good few ReTweets (RTs) of items of interest from other accounts.

@cambridgelaw

"Updates from the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge".  Automated feed from their news webpages and press office.

@PGLawEdinburgh

No bio information given, but the content is aimed at both the PG audience and wider public with news, events, retweets and replies to other tweets.

@SalfordLawTweet

"What's happening at Salford Law School, University of Salford".  Regular, interesting tweets about news and other items.  Plenty of retweets, replies and interactions with other tweeters.

Social meejah - just for kids?

Social meejah - just for kids? - new blog post from Nick Holmes regarding law firms and social media:

Head on over to Stem where Jordan Furlong is penning a series of posts on Social Media for Lawyers.

He kicked off with Facebook for law firms.

And has followed that up with Twitter for law firms.

These look at how law firms can use social media effectively to promote the firm. No journalistic hype or platitudes here: Jordan brings a wealth of experience to bear.

By Nick Holmes, 9 April 2010

Jordan laments that the following is what a typical law firm Twitter account contains, and to some extent, Law Schools (if they use social media, do the same):

• copied-and-pasted headlines from the firm’s press releases, with a link thereto;
• copied-and-pasted headlines from the firm’s newsletters or blogs, with a link thereto;
• news that a lawyer at the firm has appeared in a media outlet, with a link thereto;
• news that a lawyer at the firm has received an award or designation, with a link thereto;
• news that the firm has successfully completed a client engagement, with a link thereto.

His plain and simple advice is to keep two things in mind: (1) it’s all about the clients, and (2) it’s not all about the firm. Updates deliver breaking news of interest to the firm’s clientele, or provide links to reports of interest and importance to clients’ industries, or spread the word about upcoming events and opportunities that could deliver value to clients.

Read more here.

This may be sound advice for the law school and universities in general.  I follow my university's twitter feed, but it contains much the same as the weekly news bulletins that staff receive via email, and pretty much the same things that Jordan Furlong rejects for law firm tweeps.  I suppose this rather much depends on the intended audience that each group wishes to attract.

 
I follow quite a few law firm tweets, but mainly for the news headlines, PR hype and other news that I would otherwise not find unless I browsed their website directly, and regularly.  I'm not a client of the law firm, so do I agree with this approach?  In a way, yes, because I will only follow a feed if the content is of interest and importance, and I get value from the news or links within - so therefore I fit within Jordan's plain and simple advice.  Even though I'm not a client receiving legal sevices, in a way I am a client of their twitter feed so this definition of content should apply to me.

On the other hand, universities may have a variety of clients - including the ubiquitous student.  Do they wish to follow a twitter feed from their alma mater?  Whether they do or not is another matter entirely, but a twitter feed should be able to accommodate such a diverse audience, and the content should perhaps follow more closely Jordan's second rule of not always being about the firm/university.

So, perhaps social meejah is not only for the kids, but should include 'clients' in the widest sense!

#FollowFriday - with a BILETA theme

For those interested in Twitter, I thought an early #FollowFriday (or #FF) was worth a blog entry too.  I might do the occasional learning and teaching, or law-oriented #FF in the future and post it via the blog.

The hashtag #bileta got a fair bit of use earlier this week, and some of the delegates were:

@Technollama

@ChrisTMarsden

@TJMcIntyre

@MacSithigh

@LilianEdwards