Social Media Infographics Built to Last?

Goldmine: 60 Informative Social Media Infographics

REALITY CHECK!
When you first discover a social media infographics goldmine, you are like...WOW! Now, I can really spice up my presentations with some sizzling social media infographics to stimulate the audience. But, then you start to look at the statistics found in these infographics, and then you realize (I hope!) that much of the data shared are outdated and kind of useless (at the moment of discovery).

Yes, the infographics look cool, but should coolness override showing relevant and updated data?

The problem with many social media infographics is that the social media numbers are still radically changing, and will so for some time to come. For example, Facebook has around 650 million users now, but is expected to grow to 1 billion by 2012. Or worse yet, your super infographic shows 400 million Facebook users!

So, can we find social media infographics that are built to last (at least for a year or two!)?




FUTURE INFOGRAPHICS?
For finding updated Facebook infographics/charts (not totally cool, but at least reasonably updated), Socialbakers is a great place to find tons of stats, including informative details on your country. But, you will still have to manually update your slides with the latest Facebook stats once a while to ensure that they are updated and still relevant.

Wouldn't it be cool if you could use a dynamic plug-in or widget plucked into your presentation (PowerPoint/Keynote), which via the Internet could continuously keep your social media stats updated and relevant? Better yet, it allowed presenters to manipulate or play with the data, and then we could visually experience the process from inception to present, besides the final snapshot. Gapminder is a perfect example of how I would love my dynamic (social media) infographics to work.


Another good example would be Gary's Social Media Count:

Besides these three (3) examples above, I am pretty sure that there are many more dynamic social media infographics to discover and use, and that I hope YOU can share with US (Thank you!). I will add them below as we discover together.

In a nut shell, dynamic infographics should:

• Provide easy access to continuously updated and relevant data/information.
• Have an embed feature (script/widget/plug-in) making it easy to add to our presentation (or website).
• Be self-updating every time you access the Internet.
• Show the changes over time (start to present) of what it is illustrating (if applicable).
• Enable us to manipulate the data/information (if applicable).
  

Have you found any dynamic infographics that meet some, or all the criteria specified above? Now, that would be cool... PLEASE SHARE :)

My #CCK11 Talk - Sharing to Connect, Interact and Learn!

My #CCK11 Talk - Sharing to Connect, Interact and Learn!

View more presentations from Zaid Alsagoff

This presentation explores openness in education, and my own journey embracing openness in what I discover and learn.

It was presented (Elluminate session) during week 9 (Openness & Transparency) of the ’Connectivism & Connective Knowledge 2011' (CCK11) course facilitated by Stephen Downes and George Siemens.

RECORDINGS
For those that want to recap or missed the session, here are the Elluminate and MP3 recordings:

• Elluminate Recording
  
• MP3 Audio

Click here to view all CCK11 Recordings.



FEEDBACK

Based on the feedback from Stephen, George, and the participants it seems like my online talk during CCK11 went reasonably well.

I have infused some of the (positive) comments received into the cool mash-up graphic to the right.

Overall, participants seemed to enjoy my cool graphics, informative slides, and found my voice (or me) to be passionate and full of enthusiasm.

Looking back at 2010, one of my goals was to work on my voice to reflect my passion and enthusiasm for learning (enthusiasm is contagious!!!!), and based on this session... Mission Accomplished!

But, what about the talk's substance? Mission 2011!

Although, I am receptive to positive feedback (appreciate that!), I do have my own self-evaluation sensor, which at times can be pretty brutal and unrealistic. Though, this beast is also my secret and most powerful weapon to awesome learning, so I am not going to let it go. Instead, I will celebrate it with a receptive and reflective laugh!

REFLECTION

I really enjoyed the online talk at CCK11, but I have to admit I was really exhausted after a 60-hour marathon, which included 1 lecture (Social Media & Web 2.0 for Learning), 2 workshops (IMU and UTHM in Batu Pahat), 2x4 hour (to and back driving) trips to Batu Pahat, and doing all this with a flu trying to cause havoc (Panadol and Vitamic C to the rescue)!

But thank GOD I managed to somehow get through without too many bloopers and mistakes! Though, after listening back to my talk (MP3), I realize I said 'Amazing', an amazing amount of times (too vain to count).

Also, my voice was stumbling more than usual ('Hm-ha'), which could be due to the fact that it was my first Elluminate session with my new MacBook Air (CTRL Vs Command! Touchpad!), or perhaps my limited brain power was just running out of fuel. Or could it be that especially the first part of my talk (Openness in Education), I explored areas that was not exactly my specialty, except for finding great learning resources. But then again, I always like to challenge myself, and felt that I wanted to cover it, as it was inline with the theme of the week (Openness & Transparency).

Moreover, I had problems following smoothly the lively chat-board discussion while giving the talk (produced 3000+ words during the 1-hour session). But that is something I can easily improve with a bit of practice.

In addition, I did mess up names as usual. For example, I said Stephen Downes when referring to George Siemens (on slide 31), in reference to the 'Open Education Open Debate' resource'. I suppose that is why I would be a really bad MC!

Finally, I believe the 3 reflection scribbles on the Elluminate whiteboard (Openness in Education? Why share? Moodle wish?) was something the participants collaboratively enjoyed. Some participants even found time to scribble on the slides, especially Stephen and Wiley's faces when they occurred. I believe Stephen was the ultimate scribbler (No evidence to prove it, unless he admits), and no doubt he has artistic ability that needs to be nourished.

Overall, I have no complaints, and the participants were absolutely fantastic. Also, George and Stephen didn't give me a hard time at all, which could be due to the fact that our views on openness in education are not so different. Yeah, I did praise and promote them a bit, and that surely didn't hurt their connective egos either.

It was a great learning experience and adventure that is now completed (history!), and I am truly grateful to George and Stephen for giving me this opportunity.

Thanks :)

Kable.MY - Malaysia's Premiere Instructional Technology Website

Kable.MY

"This website provides the latest news, articles and tutorials on emerging technologies for educational purposes, and serves as a hub for educators to congregate and share ideas that can be put into practice. It is hoped that this website will be on the forefront of Malaysia's instructional technology and inspire educators to use technologies to enhance their instructions."

NEW!
19 hours ago, I got a pleasant e-mail from Hafiz Hanif, who invited me to visit his new Kable.MY website. I was also invited to be a freelance writer for the website, but I told him instead of being a freelance writer, why not use whatever you like from ZaidLearn, and then link back to the original post (article). The reason is that whatever I write to share (to anyone), I will post it on ZaidLearn (First!). Anyway, this post is not about ZaidLearn, but about this awesome Kable.MY website that I just discovered, thanks to Hafiz Hanif.

Although, Kable.MY is still brand new, and probably needs some time to build up a substantial collection of awesome articles (unless they reuse with attribution and permission from great Edubloggers out there), I am really impressed with the website design, and the first few articles too are very useful and relevant.



INSPIRING!
Also, I like their team's learning philosophy and spirit:

"We are a bunch of normal educators like you, with the enthusiasm to provide the latest and fun ways to teach students, to inspire them with the use of technologies that are often regarded as a separate entity from our instructional strategies. Here, we share our thoughts on how to integrate technologies into your everyday teaching and learning activities, and how to understand the design of certain applications, how to re-purpose the applications to suit our educational needs, and how to get control over our own methodological strategies (Source)."

Yes, certainly a good start! The challenge is to keep that volcanic creative eruption continuously flowing, and if the passion and focus is there... WOW, this could evolve into something really special!

Thinking of it, after being inspired by Kable.MY's awesome website design, I believe it is time to relook and rethink the website design of ZaidLearn, which has not really changed much since its inception. But then again, neither has Google's homepage either. But, then again I have yet to find that swoosh factor that fits ZaidLearn's flavor and content. One thing for sure, I would want the revamped website to infuse a lot of (white) dreaming space free from anything.

I believe it is time to erupt some changes soon...Need another 102 days to think about it!

Kable.MY, thanks for this inspiring website, and hopefully it will inspire more educators in Malaysia to share their learning stories and tips. Yes, why not :)

Use Backupify to Backup Your Social Media Stuff!

Backupify

"Backupify is an all-in-one archiving, search and restore service for the most popular online services including Google Apps, Facebook, Twitter, Picasa and more."

If you are looking for a tool to backup your social media stuff (Google Docs/Sites, Twitter, Blogger, Facebook, etc.), Backupify is a pretty cool tool. Though, you need to keep in mind that the free version is currently limited to 2GB storage, so the idea of using it for backing up for example your Gmail would also probably require you to invest in the commercial version, unless your Gmail account is below 2 GB (Very unlikely!!!!). Though, the current pricing is reasonable (Pro 100 version - $4.99/month), so it might be a good idea to consider such an option if your Gmail is critical to your work, studies and life.


Putting Gmail aside, I would recommend using the free version of Backupify to backup your blog, Twitter, and other social media stuff that are reasonably light. The free version does weekly backups of up to 5 accounts (e.g. Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, Google Docs, and Google Calendar). If you want to backup more accounts on a daily basis, then you need to subscribe to the commercial version.

If you are wondering how Backupify works, then watch this video tutorial:

Cool! But, are there better social media backup tools out there?

Or tools that enable you to backup unlimited social media accounts providing unlimited storage space? Now, that would be AWESOME :)