The lessons behind the burger…

Brainstorming at the outset of the project quickly developed a ‘wish list’ of (low/no cost) technology tools to employ. One aspect of this was the use of Web 2.0 wherever possible. A second – and more school-relevant aim – was to employ our portal facilities better.

There are many educators out there enthused by, and using Web 2.0 tools, but how many are seriously trying to make as many happen in one project?

So here is a list of what was intended from the outset (note: ‘intended’ and ‘actual’ might vary to some extent):

• A blog (edublogs) – for the publishing aspect of the project
• Social networking (Twitter) – to provide updates and information live (and to develop a ‘personality’ for The Burger
• RSS feeds – the facility for people to use RSS to provide updates on the project
• Live streamed video feed (ustream) – to allow for anyone to monitor the project (this to be embedded in the blog itself)
• Moderated discussion forum (portal, SharePoint-based [Scholaris]) – for school-side asynchronous planning
• Wiki (portal, SharePoint-based [Scholaris]) – to develop a corporate repository for information
• Integrated multimedia (podcast/vodcast) – to add rich media content to the project
• Tracking tools (Google Analytics, Clustrmap) – to visualise and analyse global reach statistics
• Mobile blogging (utterli) – to blog remotely (if a relevant context can be found!)

A note about what won’t (officially) occur as part of the project. Facebook/Myspace and YouTube are not available for student use at school due to existing policies. These aspects of social networking and multimedia distribution were, therefore, not considered as part of the project proper. That’s not to say that they haven’t been employed by individuals (at home, in their own time) to promote the project!

An additional tool that has ‘appeared’ during the project, which has added to student motivation has been Twitter Grader. This rates your Twitter profile against all of those already rated on a number of criteria including the number and ‘power’ of your network, how frequent your updates are and how informative your profile is. This is expressed as a percentage. Interestingly, during the first two weeks of the project, The Burger’s Twitter Grade went from 30% to 48% in the time the number of graded profiles rose from 90,000 to 180,000. Seeing this turned out to be a very exciting thing for students.

Another interesting tool that emerged early on during the project, relating to Google Analytics, is the Adobe air application called Analytics Reporting Suite. This allows application- rather than web-based access to the site statistics in a way that students could view and understand with ease. Incidentally The Burger’s Twitter account was mainly updated through the use of another air application: Twhirl.