Never Seconds trends on Twitter

I love it. The power of Twitter, that is. I can't be said to love the council for whom I used to work and in whose area I live, nor the idiocy that had them ban a blog about school dinners, nor the illiteracy of the hapless employee who was chosen to write Argyll & Bute's public statement about their reasons for such an action. And I fear, from the relative silence of the council's Twitter stream, that they will currently be buckling under the strain of the incoming flak - I've had to delete the column as it updates too rapidly for me to read at the moment. The blog in question has attracted 2543350 hits and the stat counter shows a new hit every second. You can go and look for yourself while I ramble happily here.

When I ran a school newspaper in an Argyll & Bute school, they did a feature on school meals. We didn't actually think this was out of line - that's not a royal 'we', despite the Jubilee season, it's my pupil editors with my approval - but rather something that would appeal to anyone who'd ever eaten school dinners. As as result, my articulate and wonderful editors - and gosh, haven't they done well in later life? - were hauled over the coals and told that a school meals supervisor had left her job ... Did that really happen? I don't remember being brought into the fray, as the pupils in question assured me there was no need, in another example of fortitude under fire and independence of thought and other worthy attributes that I was proud to help foster.

I've had my ups and downs over social media this week, but today's outpouring shows, perhaps, why people fear it so much. Yes, there is the odd numpty who uses a trending hashtag to post nonsense (usually sexual) on Twitter, but it was easy to filter them out of my screenshot and most of what I've seen reflects the mainstream view: that banning a pupil from taking photos of the food she has paid for and is about to eat is high-handed, authoritarian nonsense. Of course, they will justify it by saying they've banned mobile phones in schools or making some other similarly thoughtful response. People tend to want to ban anything that might expose their workings to public scrutiny - and nowadays, that's virtually impossible. The workings need, then, to be such that the organisation or individual is proud to have them on display - and that, chums, includes the food we feed our children. Martha, whose blog has caused all the furore, seems to rate most of her more recent meals pretty highly - do the council know something she (and we) don't?

I loved my time as teacher editor of The Pupils' View. I'm proud of what my former pupils have achieved, just as I was proud of them at the time. But right now I'm glad I don't teach any more, glad I don't work for Argyll & Bute council, glad I'm not answerable to anyone on this subject. I suspect I'd be too full of rage this morning to work effectively. But if I were still involved, I'd have the satisfaction of knowing that my MP, the Minister for Education, was on my side. How? Because I'd have read it on Twitter.

Footnote: and - again on Twitter - I learn that the Chief Executive of Argyll and Bute Council has reversed the decision to ban the blog. Cheers!

Proud - and twittering

Another Synod gone, and only one photo on my camera of the proceedings (it is surely appropriate that I use one of Fr. Kelvin addressing Synod) - the rest were all of socialising and food. I had more to do this Synod than in previous years, which was interesting and rewarding, and we sang the Sanctus from Mr B's Kilbride Mass at the Eucharist, which people joined in with gusto and seemed to enjoy, but the main event was, I suppose, the one that attracted most attention - the vote on the Anglican Covenant.  We seem to have spent forever kicking it around without actually shooting for goal, so it was good to get the the point of voting on whether or not the Scottish Episcopal Church was going to take it further or reject it.

The debate was civilised and serious - no ranting, no raised voices, but thoughtful points well made. One speaker summed up the Covenant wonderfully when he likened it to a blancmange with shards of glass in it - work that one out. Someone at some point had referred to a French proverb: fier comme un Ecossais. and for me the real surge of pride in my church came at the moment when the votes against adoption were called for. There was a sudden rustle as a sea of voting slips - pink, yellow, purple - rose into the air; people held them high, like so many eager pupils wanting to be seen, rather than the more usual nonchalant pose. The Covenant was firmly rejected, and it felt good then to go on and affirm our desire to remain as part of the Anglican Communion. (You can read a much more knowledgeable account of the proceedings here, where you'll also learn of other good things that took us out of any tendency to navel-gaze;  I'll stick with my own take).

We've come a long way since the 2006 Synod where I moaned about being patronised for blogging, but some things haven't changed. This year it was Twitter. Again. Someone stood to make the point that he'd been brought up to listen attentively to speakers, and that it surely wasn't right that people should sit distracted by tweeting, passing comments online and so on. No, this person wasn't a nonagenarian; he was still just the right side of forty, making me one of the generation that, apparently, had made him thus. And I learned today that the aforesaid Kelvin was at an event where he had been invited to contribute to a discussion on social media - but where all phones and computers were to be turned off. So it's obviously still an issue in too many circles for me not to have another wee rant.

These people who want to stifle digital discussion are, it seems to me, living in what I have just heard deliciously described on the radio as an imagined analogue past - a past where, as the speaker said, everyone read their newspapers from cover to cover and was wonderfully and diversely informed. I'd say this imagined past was also one in which people hung on every word of every speaker at events like Synod, be they never so tedious, and never doodled on their Synod papers; where no-one passed a note to his neighbour or - more disruptively - whispered to her pal. My first reaction to hearing this complaint the other day was to tweet about it - for one of the wonderful things about social media is that we no longer have to seethe internally when confronted with patent nonsense. 

I would contend that if someone speaks interestingly, arrestingly, movingly, that person will be heard with as much attentiveness as anyone could wish for. If they say something memorable, it may well be tweeted and retweeted - a way of sharing a special moment. Most of us turn to less respectful use of social media when we are bored. Stick up a boring speaker and people will either drift off into sleep or check on their email or share a ribald thought online - and that's fine, you know, because as far as I'm concerned the biggest sin in a speaker is to be a bore. I've called in the past for a live back-channel; this year we had a time-delayed one showing what was being said on Twitter after the session had ended, so we're moving forward. 

We're moving forward all right. No-one presented a paper which they then proceeded to read aloud to Synod - they reminded us of what page it could be found on and assumed we'd had the sense to read it. We were moved, entertained, and - largely - involved. But God preserve the church - and me - from the people who want to keep us in the imagined analogue past. Apparently Plato said that using writing would mean that our memories would suffer. We seem to have got past that without going entirely to the dogs, yes? I shall take heart from the knowledge that the perpetrator of the patronising remarks that so irritated me in 2006 is now an amiable blogger. Here's to the next Synod... 

Twittering respectably

I've been catching up on some old friends' blogs - you can thank the weather for that, chaps! - and came across this post from Neil Winton just as I was pondering again (or anew, as the hymn hath it) the business of officialdom and social media. When I left the classroom - god, it's been six years - I could still look at flickr and some blogs on the school system, though Richard Holloway's work was largely taboo because, it seemed, he'd used naughty words. So NetGear said anyway.  Now, apparently, it is hard in schools to access any of the sites I've grown accustomed to using daily. Everyone and their grannies now know what Twitter is, but heaven forfend that our young should be able to use it.

Stupid logic, of course. I've been using Twitter since, November 2006. An earlyish adopter, then.  I've been blogging for a year or so longer. And I've been evangelical about the power of social media for most of the intervening years. But now I'm no longer involved in schools and education at large; my forum tends to be in church circles. So I've stood up at Synods both General and Diocesan and begged for blogs to be used to communicate and for Bishops to use Twitter. And back then - some 4/5 years ago -  I was scoffed at, either gently or violently. But gradually we saw bloggers doing their slightly risky thing on the sidelines of Synod, and then Twitter took over as comments were tweeted and shared live. Bishops blogged and had Facebook accounts. There were lunchtime meetings to help the uninitiated get over their fears (I'm talking General Synod here - all two and a half days of it) and, finally, official guidelines in the Synod papers for kind and responsible Tweeting. Social media had, on the face of it, arrived.

But we need to be careful here. There are still many, many people who have "no time" for Twitter and "all that stuff" - and that "no time" can be factual or pejorative in intent. And all too often they are the people who run organisations - because suddenly they see the huge potential for ... what? Anarchy? Revolution? Criticism?

Yes. Of course. All of these things. That's why repressive regimes block Facebook. I'm reminded, probably because of the context in which I now operate, of how the Bible used to be forbidden fruit to the common people, and then to women - much safer to keep it in Latin and in the hands of the priests, much more seemly for women to take their men's word for what was in this dangerous book. But hey - we all read the Bible now, if we feel so inclined, and we sometimes find new and exciting things in it, in our unschooled, lay fashion. And the job of the professionals is to help all of us to read sensibly, not to make basic errors in comprehension, to put it in a historical context and so on. The church as it is today, shrinking as it may be, seems to me a healthier and more alive organism for the active participation of its members.

And what, do you ask, has this to do with Twitter? Well, Twitter and other social media exist. People have become accustomed to using them to broadcast their status. Not all people are sensible, and some users of social media are downright silly - they're just people. But you can't stop them making fools of themselves, in public or not. You can assume that people at a gathering like Synod will, for the most part, have a modicum of intelligence and a large helping of goodwill - they wouldn't be there otherwise. I've already remarked on the lack of much tweeting during the last Synod - because someone, apparently, thought fit to warn them off at one point. I missed that bit, so I don't know how it was done. But for next year, I'd like to see a Twitter live backchat channel on the screens, so that everyone in the hall can see what's being said as it's said - and the people up front can have the chance to react to it.

Going back to the trigger for this post - the drive to have social media become normal in schools - I'm pushed into wondering if official blessing is in fact the one way to kill something off. I think our young might well tell us it is ...

Fiddling at Synod?

Oh dear. I've been remiss in my blogging - but I've been away. Not more continental junketings, alas, but at the General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church. I seem to have participated rather often in this gathering over the years, but realise it's because I was a diocesan alternate before I was chosen as a representative ... but I maunder. Don't expect an official or exhaustive take on proceedings, however - you can find that here - my impressions are very patchy this year.

This is largely because I missed quite a chunk of things, including the task of facilitating discussion - I'd been looking forward to that - because I was no weel. Quite apart from my scheduled trip to Glasgow to have a small bit of me removed, I suffered horribly from our diocesan dinner and missed a whole morning on Mission; by the time I returned I realised I felt the way I used to after an absence from school: you caught measles or somesuch and when you went back you found out that everyone else had learned to do long division and you were totally lost.

And it's hard to get back into things in those circumstances. I was led to ponder how vital it is that individual speakers engage with their audience - it is so easy to switch off and let the mind wander as some voice drones on about ... but if I'm specific I shall pinpoint the offenders, and it is not my intention to wound. Rather I would beg that speakers are instructed in the art of eye contact, tonal variation and register - indeed, in the whole art of public speaking that they would have learned in Standard Grade had they been in my classroom. Maybe there's a job there for a certain bishop on the verge of retirement: having muttered resentfully about the boredom of one address, and having been rebuked by a more charitable neighbour on the grounds that this was after all the graveyard slot, I found myself once more engaged - and amused - by said bishop in his follow-up comments. Graveyard? I reckon he could make the dead laugh ...

Just to show that I'm not all girns and detachment, I should add here how much I enjoyed the break from traditional tedium offered by the indaba process. I was in a feisty group which in the end had to agree to disagree, but it was such a relief to be able to test responses on others rather than one's unfortunate neighbour or the twitterverse at large - though I had the feeling, confirmed later, that the twitterers had been somewhat discouraged while I was away being poorly. Someone had got it into their head that to tweet meant to be insensitive and crass and that it had therefore to be spelled out when tweeting would be inappropriate. I fear that is what happens when a spontaneous activity becomes respectable ... and I'm glad I didn't know about it, for that would have made me much, much worse.

But you'll be glad to know that my old friend the complacent male was at Synod. This was a cunningly camouflaged wee dinosaur, but his message was the same: it's a waste of time - in fact, it's navel-gazing - to fret about gender imbalance in church matters. He said it so quietly, slipping it in after one of the more mind-numbing exegeses, that we were onto the next item before I'd clocked it and got my hackles working - I told you I'd been no weel - and I was left frustrated. I shoulda said something. But then it was pointed out to me that his comment had been met by a wall of silence.  And it was suggested that I should perhaps think about this silence. What did it mean? Well for a start it sure wasn't applause - and we'd had plenty of applause for other speakers, so people were by no means apathetic. As a teacher and speaker, I know there is nothing more disheartening than silence - for I take silence to show indifference or apathy, or perhaps that everyone has gone to sleep. So maybe I wasn't needed after all - maybe the church as a body is getting past the Mesozoic age (I had to look that up) and his remark was indeed seen as crass by the majority of those present. Maybe my more normal kneejerk reaction would have merely confirmed him - and others, for I'm sure he's still not quite alone - that women (or other excluded groups) are only interested in their own causes and don't care that creation burns (see pic). The silence on the part of all the Saturday Synod survivors might even have taught him that he really shouldn't say these things. (It may be too late for him not to think them - he was not in his first youth)

But I feel I'm going on a bit. I shall finish with what, after cooling down slighly, I tweeted as my last word on the Synod:

The day a woman stands up and says we should not fuss about gender balance, all will be well. #pisky #secsynod

Loud twittering

Is Twitter the big thing these days, then? Yesterday a media job was advertised through Twitter and the applicant twittering about his success later on in the afternoon; the BBC website advocates using Twitter to keep up to date with Swine Flu news and advice.

In education, of course, we have the fear factor – the recent furore over the twittering teacher is proof enough of the success of the medium – and it remains for twitterers in educational circles to make the breakthrough that everyone else in the know has made already.

Over a year ago I suggested that Twitter would be a great way to keep us up to date with the peregrinations of our bishop, only to be told that there was no time for such stuff. (Sadly, many teachers still think this. And cooncillors.) It’ll be interesting to see how persuasive the communications people (pity they’re using a Twitter virgin as their advocate) at the SEC Synod will be this year. But I shall be in the Big Smoke - I shall have to rely on Twitter to find out.

Been thinking some more about the Twittering Teacher. The Oban Times piece is so hysterical that the first reaction is still to laugh, to damn Argyll and Bute Council, and to carry on Twittering like mad. But if you read what this hapless teacher has twittered, you see why there was a stushie. Only thing is, it’s nothing to do with wasting time, indulging in nefarious online practices or anything else of that nature. No, it’s to do with her being just a bit silly.

Once upon a time I spoke to the Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church about blogging as a means of keeping people connected – you know the sort of thing. And the reigning comms supremo buttonholed me afterwards to pooh-pooh the whole blog thing because of its association, in his mind, with hapless American adolescents who dumped their every thought online and left it there. This was obviously not what sensible adults did.

Sadly, this teacher – who seems to be a PT – is really doing the American adolescent thing on the even speedier forum of Twitter. And instead of someone pointing out, quietly, that really she ought to be able to differentiate between what is suitable to share, and what is in fact hurtful or a matter for professional discretion, the council representatives go nuts and say

‘Social network sites are blocked in all schools as policy. Any member of staff found to have breached council policy will face appropriate disciplinary action.’

And so other professionals are told they can’t tweet for ideas, assistance or professional input, all because one teacher lost it. But she didn’t lose it as badly as the Oban Times suggests here:

There is also a shameful admission of a lack of interest in teaching.

‘Hello…where I am stuck in a maths cover lesson, at least the sun is shining.’ 10.01am May 11.

The teacher concerned would not be teaching at this point, but would be stuck in the classroom of an absent colleague, supervising a class in a subject not her own. There is little to do under these circumstances but watch the time pass and keep order – you don’t teach. It’s boring. And all the time you think of the work you’re not able to do because you’ve lost a precious non-contact period. People perhaps don’t know this – and maybe they should. Maybe it’s a good thing for the general public to know how a teacher’s day is really spent – so why not twitter this?

Back to blogs. There are still people who put unwise comments on their blogs, remarks thrown out carelessly which have the power to wound and offend. But blogs exist, and social networking sites exist, and there is no point in damning the technology because people are just as silly as they ever were. The Scottish Episcopal Church embraced blogging a couple of years ago, and this year the Synod will take a tentative look at Twitter – again, a couple of years after I first suggested it’d be a good way to keep track of one’s Bishop. And nothing Argyll and Bute council can say will make any difference.

Twittering Argyll and Bute

I've just picked up (via AB) on an interesting wee story set in my own local authority and involving some outrage over the Tweets of a teacher. You can read the original tale here. We have the obligatory angry parent who "knows half the pupils being commented on", and the local councillor who doesn't think teachers should be wasting their time on such sites - he thinks it is a drain on public resources.

If the reported tweets are representative of this teacher's crime, then the angry parent is either psychic or has been indulging in extensive research through her child. Maybe she spends her days on Twitter herself. And both she and the councillor seem to think that Tweeting takes up a lot of time, while anyone who knows anything about it is well aware it is the work of seconds to tweet a comment. No, what people don't like is the sudden insight into the life of a teacher, this well-paid paragon who always feels enthusiasm for even the most disruptive class, never blanches at the paperwork she has to fill out every time a child swears, never, ever complains about the lovely children whom the complaining parents have dispatched for the day and whose behaviour and work will always be the very best they can manage.

Teachers have always indulged in this sort of conversation, with each other, with friends, with anyone who cares to listen, on a bad day. This teacher's tweets seem not to name names, and to be, frankly, pretty bland - and two out of the four quoted were made outside school hours. What will Argyll and Bute do to the defiant ones who dare to tweet again? How wonderful if there were to be a deluge of @Argyll&Bute posts - the system might well grind to a halt, given past form.

Goodness, am I glad to be free. Are other councils run by such ignorant technophobes? I feel a Keatsian moment coming on: Tweet to the spirit ditties of no tone....

Twittering away

I love this. I got the link from Neil, who sent me here. It shows all the stuff I tweet about - and if you don't know about Twitter maybe this is the day. It would be just the thing to update, for example, the Bishop's diary: if he tweeted "On Lewis" we wouldn't even try to get him to pop down for a flying visit to Dunoon, and if "Too busy to talk to a soul" or "driving from Campbeltown to Fort William" we'd know not to ring. No-one would be offended and everyone who cared to know would be in the loop.

But you can see from my little cloud of tweets above that I seem to be preoccupied with offspring and bed. Sounds just about right ...

Linked

Let's hear it for Twitter. I've used the app for some time - though the badge on my blog used to annoy some of my readers 'cos it took so long to load - but it's only recently I've kept a tab open on my desktop and so added to the fascinating details of my day-to-day existence on a regular basis. Best of all, however, is that I now have some sense of what my offspring are doing - because though they blog, they update small details more often and that's what gives a picture of lives unfolding. Interesting, in a Pepysian sort of way - for you tend to write such things as "and so to bed" at the appropriate moment.

Of course, the downside of all this communication is that you become unreasonably anxious when it's not available. Remember when your friends or family used to go off on a fortnight's holiday and all you got was a postcard after they'd arrived home? How did we survive?

The Tale of the Twittering Son

Once upon a time there was a relatively doting mother who did all the cool things like using the internet, sending mails, blogging, surfing, wasting precious hours of her dwindling tale of years wandering Second Life as an absurd avatar, sending text messages, photosharing - even using facebook and Twitter. She read her children's blogs to such an extent that she was able to converse with some semblance of knowing what was going on and she tried not to phone them when they might be tired/grumpy/watching footie/cooking/eating/changing the baby. She admired their photos and sympathised when they had domestic problems like floods or leaks.

And so it was, O Best Beloved (sorry, Kipling) that one day, while updating her own Twitter status with some mundane thought, she came upon the news that one of her children was having plumbing issues for the second time in two months. The problem had been in the public domain for all of two days before she had become aware of it. Immediately she was stricken with pangs of guilt - had she been remiss in not Twittering more assiduously? - and irritation. Why had she not been personally informed? Why had her words of wisdom - for she was, after all, a Wise Woman - not been sought instantly?

But being such a Wise Woman she decided that this is the way the world goes. She who does not Twitter constantly is a failure as a mother and deserves to be ignored. And maybe, she ruminated, it was better to have electronic contact with her offspring than have them constantly at her door. After all, she might have ended up waiting in for the plumber.

BTW - there's a second new American experience poem on frankenstina