Hannah Whaley . com

I realised recently that my Twitter addiction has weaned me from my YouTube addiction without my knowledge. Sneaky Twitter. As I was reminiscing about my forgotten video friends I got to thinking about videos that I would happily watch again and again – and why. I think some videos are just good for you. So here is my pick of 3 videos that educational technologists should make time to watch every so often. I am sure you will have seen all of these before, but take 5 mins or so to watch them again now and think about why. If they don’t make you smile even a little then consult a doctor – you may be dead inside.

1. Michael Wesch’s Students: A Vision of Students Today
Great video which I first saw when he was a keynote at a Blackboard conf. I’ve heard many reactions to this video – some saying that it scares them, that they worry about how fast HE is changing, that they feel sorry for students today. Personally, it makes me happy, it reminds me that I’m glad I do the job I do. I’m glad there are others out there too, trying to make universities grow and change. Watch this and smile – you’re doing a good job.

2. Mrs Palin: Song for Sarah
I first saw this after a friend of a friend on facebook posted it, saying that it was two Russian students that they had taught. In the midst of the biggest election campaign in history they produced this video themselves, in response to Sarah Palin’s infamous interview about her foreign policy credentials (which seemed to centre around the fact that America used Alaska to launch planes into Russian airspace). Watch this and remember that your students are ingenious – you would be daft to underestimate them.

3. Dancing Matt: Where the Hell is Matt?
I can’t remember where I was first linked to this video. Matt dances all around the world, and finds some friends to dance with along the way. A great reminder that it is in our nature to build communities as soon as we have any common ground at all. Watch this, and think about how many more ways we could find to really interact with each other.

Any others?

Tweetie is my preferred twitter client for iPhone. I have about 4 others installed (including Twitterific and Twitterfon) but use nothing but Tweetie. I therefore had good reason to be excited about the release of the Tweetie Mac client a couple of days ago.

I expected it to be good, I didn’t expect to love it. And I do love it.

At first, I thought this was because:

• It has proper customizable show and hide commands
• You can easily do searches without switching client or using twitter’s webpage
• You can ‘tear off’ searches and keep them running
• It displays conversations as conversations
• You can retweet, and you can post webpages using a Tweetie bookmarklet
• Easy access to @ replies and direct messages

Then I realized something – those are the things that make it good, not the reason I love it. I actually love it because it is simple yet does advanced things, its smooth, it’s well laid out, it flows, it looks pretty. It has streamlined things I didn’t even realize I did regularly until I can now do them with less hassle. In short: it is well designed. You can never underestimate the power of something that is well designed – its what moves software from being useful to being a real pleasure to use.

The Twitterific client has been removed from my Mac dock. Not only has Tweetie taken its place, but I’ve actually designated some screen real estate for it to live in. It deserves it. A reminder to us all that thoughtful design is worth more than the sum of any number of features.