tweeting about spaces for learning

i'm so ridiculously excited about this!

a while ago i started playing with twitter, the micro-blogging site. at first, it didn't seem like such a big deal - writing a short update (a 'tweet') about what i was doing at any point in time (usually either "sat at work" or "yay! work's over - off to the pub...") was mildly diverting, and reading other people's tweets was interesting - but just confirmed that everyone else has a much more interesting life than me. and then one day, while on the cross-campus dash between shu's city and psalter lane sites, i sent an update from my phone - and suddenly, i had a hare-brained idea...

at the time we were looking at appropriate methodology for the next phase of learning spaces research. we're particularly interested in how the attributes of spaces make them conducive - or not - to informal learning. we'd been thinking about using reflective diaries - something that had worked well previously as part of our e-learning research - but what if we could get our students to tell us what they were doing at the point in which they were doing it? what if they could tell us where they were learning there and then?

like most hare-brained schemes, we decided to get it up and running as soon as possible (after all, if we waited too long someone might point out its lack of scientific validity or sanity). and so, this week we're starting a 2-week study, whereby 15 students have been recruited to provide around 15 updates a week about where they're learning. a couple of them have started to provide us with updates ahead of time (if you suffer from continuous partial attention like i do, you can check out http://twitter.com/learningspaces/with_friends to see the updates as they come through - otherwise, i'll post occasional summaries and reflections on this blog along the way).

of course, this is the first time we've ever tried this, so it could all go horribly wrong...but i'm excited anyway to see how it works out :)