Lately, however, Ive had cause to re-evaluate my use of the service. I’ve been prompted to write this post by three things, the most recent of which was one of Doug Noon’s comments on my last post:

I’ve avoided Twitter because I don’t want to be *that* connected. I know that it might be “useful” on some level, but so would joining clubs, taking classes, reading great books, working for non-profit civic organizations, and spending time with family. Everyone should set their own priorities, and define some limits.

The second was an incoming link to one of my posts over at teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk about the potential of using Twitter in the classroom. They didn’t like the idea, although the way they tried to link together ‘facts’ to build an argument was woeful:

Nearly one million people use Twitter. That is almost negligible for a US website but guess how many people work in IT in California? Nearly a million. So how many “normal” people do you think use Twitter?

Erm, I don’t think they’re one and the same group of people. But anyway, they continue:

When was the last time anyone normal (i.e. not people who get paid to look at these things) did anything (that did not  involved a dancing seal or laughing baby) as a result of Twitter or Digg or Second Life – or even to a slightly lesser extent Facebook or FriendFeed or MySpace?

They may have a point about preaching to the choir here. But I suppose this post is to do with business and the (monetary) value of getting involved social networking and Web 2.0 as a whole. Perhaps more damning is my all-time favourite blogger, Kathy Sierra (much missed after the debacle last year) who showed us the dangers of The Asymptotic Twitter Curve:

The idea behind Kathy’s worries about the use of Twitter stems from a book by the wonderfully unpronounceable Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi entitled Flow. It’s a book I’ve been threatening to read for around 5 years now! The state of ‘flow’ is, unsurprisingly, a highly productive state in which an individual is ‘in the zone’. Kathy argues that this is almost impossible when you’ve got constant interruptions and distractions. Twitter’s certainly one for putting you off the task in hand.

So what I’ve begun to do, following the example of someone I read recently (but have now forgotten where) is to have two modes of working. The first is best described as outwards-facing, the second inwards-facing. When I’m in the former mode, I’m available on Skype, Twitterific automatically refreshes my friends’ tweets every 3 minutes, and I’m available on Google Talk via GMail. I’m using all four of my virtual desktops via OSX Leopard’s ‘Spaces’ feature and I’m moving around flitting from this to that. Effectively, I’m in ‘networked’ mode.

On the other hand, when I’m in the latter, inwards-facing mode, I’m working minimalistically: I’m invisible on Skype, Google Talk is closed, Twitterific is closed down, and I’m working with – at most – 2/3 tabs in Firefox. Almost everything I do is created and stored online these days, so usually it will be Google Docs and a couple of other websites for reference. I find this, coupled with the right kind of music, to be much more conducive to a state of flow than the ‘networked’ method of working.

What do you think? Is Twitter a bad thing? How do you use it?

First of all, the best places (in my experience) from which to get information about modifying your AppleTV are:

• AwkwardTV.org (especially the wiki and forum)
• SmallNetBuilder – Hacking the AppleTV
• Inverted Reality – AppleTV Hacks
• last100 – A collection of AppleTV resources
• Systm – Episode 7 (Apple TV)

I’ll continue adding links as I find them with the tag ‘appletv’ to my del.icio.us account.

The process of getting the AwkwardTV software wasn’t difficult. You simply need to create something called a ‘Patchstick’ which is a trivial procedure if you follow the Beginners Guide and are running an Intel Mac with OSX 10.4 (Tiger). If you’re on Windows or OSX 10.5 (Leopard) then you might want to search for a pre-built Patchstick image to download at somewhere like YouTorrent.

According to the instructions, you should have some problems if you’ve got an AppleTV which has v1.1 as the factory default firmware. I didn’t. All I did was follow the instructions as per v1.0 and it worked fine.

Once the AwkwardTV option appears on the AppleTV menu you’re pretty much sorted. Or at least you should be. You can enable SSH and AFP access which means the AppleTV is accessible over the network. You can also install software (plugins) that add to the device’s functionality. The best of these, and the one I was looking forward to installing, is NitoTV. This plugin enables USB and network automounting, plays DivX files etc. via mplayer and supports emulators for games on your AppleTV!

Unfortunately, when I came to the list of plugins available, NitoTV wasn’t there. Apparently this is because it doesn’t appear on the list until a couple of weeks after the most recent version has been released. Don’t ask me why – I don’t know! It was manual installation time, and I was going to have to get my hands dirty…

After staying up until 3.30am (time flies when there’s a problem to solve) I discovered what I needed to do to get NitoTV onto my AppleTV.

1. Download and extract the NitoTV plugin (usually by double-clicking on it)
2. Open the Terminal application under OSX (open Spotlight and search for it if you don’t know where it’s located)
3. Enter: ssh -1 frontrow@AppleTV.local (the password is frontrow)
4. Enter: sudo mount -o remount,rw/dev/disk0s3/
5. Enter: sudo mount -uw /dev/disk0s3
6. This means that the disk is mounted and we can write to it. You can close Terminal now, although we’ll need it again later.
7. Download and install Fugu.
8. Launch Fugu so you can transfer files to your AppleTV. You’ll need to enter appletv.local as the location to which to connect and frontrow as the user name. Tick the Force SSH1 option under Advanced Options. The password is also frontrow. Click here for an image of how it should look.
9. Once you’ve connected, you can simply drag-and-drop files from the local browser (on the left) to your AppleTV (on the right). Transfer the NitoTV folder to the frontrow user’s home directory (it should automatically take you there, but if not it’s under Users/frontrow)
10. Open up Terminal again. We’ll need to connect to the AppleTV again via SSH, so enter: ssh -1 frontrow@AppleTV.local (the password is frontrow)
11. Go into the nitoTV folder by entering: cd nitoTV (where ‘nitoTV’ is the name of the folder with your NitoTV files in it)
12. Enter: chmod 755 installme (to make sure you have permission to run the installation file)
13. Enter: sudo ./installme (to install NitoTV – the password, when prompted, is frontrow again)
14. Once the installation is finished the last step is to enter: sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/PlugIns/nitoTV.frappliance/Contents/Resources/fixPerm (not sure what this does but apparently it’s a required step)

Once you’ve finished, restart your AppleTV by holding down the Menu and - key together for 6 seconds. You will be prompted which language to choose and then will need to choose the ‘restart’ option. Once all this has been done, you should see something similar to the following:

The options within NitoTV are fairly straightforward and explain themselves. The only real downside to having a v1.1 AppleTV is that further steps are needed to make it ‘see’ network shares. I’ll leave that for another time as I haven’t got it figured out myself yet. At least you can transfer files to your AppleTV using Fugu!

Until something like WiMAX comes along, however, ‘hotspots’ need to be created. Up until now these have had to be done via an infrastructure, something like a home network, school or coffee shop. Via Scobleizer I found a link to Joiku who have just announced JoikuSpot. This allows mobile phones running the Symbian S60 operating system (like my Nokia N95) to share its 3G data connection via wi-fi.

This is potentially immense. Mobile data hotspots! At present there’s no encryption which is a bit dangerous, but I’m very much looking forward to seeing this develop. Unfortunately, I can’t test it at the moment: I cancelled my data connection completely after Orange kept overcharging me. I’d be interested to hear what others have to say, however.

Download JoikuSpot for free here.

First off, for those who attended the seminar I did with Futurelab on Saturday, below is embedded my part of the presentation. It’s all very visual, but I’ll flesh out what I said below:

| View | Upload your own

After Dan Sutch looked at some of the overall barriers/resistances to change he’s found through his research under the Teachers as Innovators umbrella, it was my turn. It’s easiest for the purposes of this blog post to go through each slide – although in reality I hope it was a bit smoother than that…

Perceived barriers – There are some innovations which never get off the ground not because of actual barriers but because there is a perception that things cannot/will never change. The best way to find out if something is a barrier is to attempt to cross it!

Actual barriers – Nevertheless, schools and educational institutions in general do have very real barriers (or, as Dan pointed out, resistances) to innovation. I gave the example of telling pupils they could take a photo using their mobile phones at the end of the lesson, instead of writing down their homework. I was told in no uncertain terms by a senior member of staff that this undermined the school ‘no mobile phones in school’ policy.

Mixed signals – But the above is a perfect example of mixed signals. Pupils in my school do bring their mobile phones, MP3 players, etc. into school. Parents want them to in order to be able to contact them about after-school arrangements, and some teachers (like me) want them in lessons to enhance learning. As far as I see it, the opponents in most schools are the governors acting on behalf of what they think parents want. Working against the resistance/barrier can help clarify the issue.

The dividing line – There are sometimes, however, dividing lines which one must not cross. The decision not to allow a particular innovation may have a very good basis which a teacher hasn’t realised. In that case, the individual must be respectful of the wishes of the governors and local authority. Annoying people and ‘putting their backs up’ doesn’t get anyone anywhere!

Possibilities – My current focus is on the potential of mobile technologies, those which students already own, in order to enhance learning. This includes revision slideshows, geotagging, simple games, viewing video and audio files (via Bluetooth) with mobile phones, and videos and podcasts on devices such as the iPod. There are many possibilities with using such devices: filming experiments in Science, for instance.

Anachronisms – If we don’t embrace new technologies we are left with an anachronistic education system. To a very great degree, we’ve already got this. What are classed as ‘the latest ideas’ (which are probably themselves a couple of years old) are shoe-horned into an outdated system. What we need are new pedagogies, not dictated by technology, but which makes use its possibilities.

Technology = cheap – There are always going to be objections that implementing technological solutions is an expensive business. Not the case! Why don’t we use what students have already got? OK, so there’s one pupil who hasn’t got a mobile phone or can’t afford the way it’s being used. Can’t the school afford to subsidise that? And what about the vast sums of money (not to even go into the forests of trees being chopped down) for photocopying? (REFERENCE)

Prohibition – That’s not to say, however, that using technology is always the best or most productive system. Mobile phones shouldn’t be allowed in exams (as we currently have them), for example. We do need a debate as to when and where they should be used, though. This will probably vary school-to-school, area-to-area and country-to-country.

Threat – The reason technology isn’t being adopted on a massive scale, the reason why some view it as a waste of money in education, is because we haven’t got the pedagogy behind it correct yet. But, perversely, we can’t develop that pedagogy until we use the tools. Educators need to come together formally and informally to share best practice and built up, case-by-case, examples of best practice.

Creativity – So let a thousand flowers bloom! Some projects and activities will crash and burn. We shouldn’t be afraid of things going pear-shaped or failing. We are (or should be) preparing pupils for life in the real world, after all!

Enabled – I’m optimistic about the future. There’s some great projects that I’ve heard about, some fantastic networks I’m part of, and technology is already making a massive impact on the learning lives of many pupils. We do, however, need to develop pedagogies and keep up-to-date (as much as possible) as what technology can offer.

Connectivity – At the end of the day, it’s all about making connections. One of the best things teachers can do is become part of a community which supports them in their use of technology. Behold the power that is Twitter! Ewan McIntosh used it in his session at BETT and got around 10 answers to a question inside a minute. Now that’s powerful…

That concluded my part of the presentation. Lots of questions were asked, the audience looked engaged and enthused, and the illustrator I had appointed (Baddiel & Skinner-style) to record my babbling recapped things nicely! :p

Finally, after being distinctly underwhelmed by the ‘big-hitters’ on Friday at BETT (apart from, to be honest, Microsoft’s PopFly), I discovered some little gems:

• Asus/RM Minibook (got to get one of those…)
• Elluminate (hopefully some kind of deal to be struck with EdTechRoundup)
• BBC Blast! (encouraging young people to become more creative)

I’m going to leave it there. If you’ve made it to the bottom of this post, well done! If you were at BETT, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section. Equally, if you weren’t and you’ve any questions/thoughts/feedback, fire away!