Prompted by a comment to our 'surreal' blog (see, it does have uses), I downloaded a PowerPoint template that allows Twitter to feed straight through to the PowerPoint live as it were.

The practical upshot being (and the reason I looked) that I could have students tweeting direct to a screen that would update itself as I lectured them.

Why? Two reasons:
firstly it allow them to ask questions semi-anonymously
secondly it would allow them to send in their project titles for the moment when I use their examples to show how to analyze for keywords etc.

A lecture this morning to final year computing students was a prime example of why I might want to do this. Using the 'hands up' method that at least has the advantage of technical simplicity, I had a student tell me her project was about 'event management software'. Sounds reasonable I thought and proceeded to scribble it up on the board and start dissecting it. Until - fortunately she was brave enough - she pointed out she'd said 'inventory' not 'event'. Only it took at least three goes before I caught what she was saying. Between her reasonably heavy accent, the appalling acoustics of the lecture theater and my awful (and fast declining it would appear) hearing, it was thoroughly embarrassing for all concerned. And it's happened before when an oriental student with the quietest voice I've ever heard put me (and herself) through the same trauma.

Anyway, the snag with tweeting to PowerPoint I immediately saw was that I don't actually use much PowerPoint for final year students. Typically I'm showing them a live web page. But as I was messing with the PowerPoint solution in one of our coffee shops, an academic came in and pointed out the solution.

Flock - a Firefox based browser I think she said - that handles social media really well in a side bar while your main window holds your ordinary web page. No sooner had she showed me than it was downloaded and installed and appears to do just what she said. I might even dare to use it with some computing staff I'm speaking to tomorrow and the remainder of the final year computing students I see in two sessions on Friday. Bit scary - but could be fun.