My Online Life: Exploring the Amazon

I thought I'd share with you some of my recent explorations around the internet. This week, it's Amazon. The four ways I use Amazon, the last two of which were attempts to make some money, which aren't exactly going so well, but no reason you can't save yourself the bother or do something slightly more successful with my efforts!

1. Buying 

The obvious one, but a few ways of using it to save you some money. Firstly, if you are a student, work at a uni or are alumni, then you probably qualify for an NUS Extra card. £10 a year and gives you a 5% discount on most stuff at Amazon.

There are also clever ways of searching Amazon for bargains, a useful list of techniques on MoneySavingExpert.

2. WishListing

"What should I buy Archie for his birthday?" I always have the answer to that, as I maintain Amazon wishlists for everyone in the family, which makes it easy to keep track of the things they want and easy to email out a (perma-)link to the family.

Here's is Archie's (age nearly 8) list.

3. Making Money 1

Mechanical Turk. I love the idea of this, but in fact my time is too valuable to commit to this.

The idea is to give you an easy way to get a real-human workforce to do tedious work for you, and pay a few cents per piece of work. This is typical:

I've dipped in and out of this over the past year, and having given a few evenings of my life to slightly better paying tasks (like writing descriptions or articles) I've managed nearly $16. The frustrating thing you'll see from my account report, is that sometimes your work is rejected.

Then after all this you have gift credit on Amazon.com, which I haven't figured out how to use yet as they don't ship internationally. D'oh.

4. Making Money 2

The other way to make money is to become an associate, and basically drive sales traffic to Amazon for them. The most common way this is done, which you'll see if you are reading this post on my blog directly, is to included context relevant ads on your own websites. At the time of writing, Amazon has decided an ad for hoover bags is the most relevant context. Hmmm.

For each sale resulting from a click through I provided, I get paid 5%. The most success I've had with this so far (ok, the ONLY success) is when I tweeted about a book I was reading, and remembered to use an associate link for the book:

I had 51 direct clicks to Amazon from the link, which converted into one sale, for which I earned 20p. Have tried doing this with a few more books, and although the clicks are going up, still not exactly a millionaire...

I have also been exploring Amazon's 'aStore' (still part of the associate scheme). By curating your own list of items for sale you can quickly and easily create and maintain your own online store. Here's my store: http://www.hard-to-shop-for.co.uk My only expense here was an evening to put this together (90% of which was spent trying to find stuff to put in the categories) and a few pounds for a domain name.

I like the idea that by maintaining lists (which as you can see from number 2 on this list I like doing anyway!) I can have a website out there that might bring in a few pounds with little effort. Ok, maybe pounds is optimistic - I'll let you know if I ever do reach a whole pound in commission! 

I hope there are some ideas there for you to try doing a bit more with Amazon. I enjoyed the exploration anyway!

University of Brighton Learning & Teaching Conference 2011

Our annual learning and teaching conference is one of the anchors in my work diary, a nice rounding of the academic year. This year it took place on Friday 15th July, and I've had a few days now to gather my thoughts (and my photos) for this post!

The first keynote was Sally Brown (Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Academic) and Professor of Higher Education Diversity in Teaching and Learning at Leeds Metropolitan).

Visual recording of Sally's keynote

Sally gave a very topical overview of the myriad issues preventing students progressing through their course. Some powerful home truths.

One of the highlights for me was Sally's praising of the supportive approach our colleagues at Northbrook college offer - a theme of the day for me, meeting in the flesh some of my online network from Northbrook.

Next up I co-presented a session:
Becoming an Independent Learner – The Academic Study Kit for Students
Pauline Ridley: Centre for Learning and Teaching, Lucy Chilvers: Centre for Learning and Teaching, Katie Piatt: Information Services, Katie Stripe: Brighton Language Institute

Abstract: The "Academic Study Kit" website has been launched to provide tutors and students with essential resources to support the transition to becoming an independent learner. The session will provide an opportunity to demonstrate these resources and how and why they can be used within the curriculum. Student case studies will demonstrate the use of the website for developing time management skills, academic writing style, research methodology, essay writing and note taking in lectures. Other services, such as streamed television programmes (BOB), will be featured to increase awareness of the range of resources available to support successful study. Delegates are invited to visit the website in advance of the session and think about the issues they have supporting their students' independent study.

You can view the site at: http://student.brighton.ac.uk/ask

The next session I attended was a highly interactive live blog discussion:
How many bloggers does it take to change a lightbulb? (1 to do it and 100 to comment!) 
Vanessa Cornford: Northbrook College

Abstract: My aim will be to introduce my experience with eBooks and blogging as the hub for cross disciplinary project communication.  My session will offer opportunities to watch or contribute as I live blog the conference. My session will report on a funded project which I have undertaken at Northbrook College this year. Working with a level 4 Foundation degree year group on a realized collaborative cross disciplinary performance, my aim was to build an eBook which could act like a project book, a blog and a place where links relevant to the devising of performance material across the disciplines could be placed. It was initially intended as a portal through which the general public might be involved in our creative process; following, contributing, collaborating and ultimately, coming to see the work. Part of this idea was to create a communication tool between different disciplines by which would appeal to multiple learning styles and intelligences. I hoped an eBook could be a visual project brief, a shared project book and indeed a method of assessment. I aim to share how these ideas engaged my students. I shall offer delegates the opportunity to participate in or watch the process as I blog the conference – one of the methods which contributed to the creation of the project e book.


Participants were invited to join in live on the Transitions conference blog: http://transitionsconference.blogspot.com/
I volunteered the iPads I'd brought along for my mobile tech session later in the day which gave lots of people a chance to try out the blog and provoked very interesting discussions about the pedagogy of using blogging with students - what are we trying to achieve, does assessment work, do institutional barriers matter and how do you get your students off Facebook.

At lunch we continued a lot of this debate, moving on to a discussion about the changing nature of what it means to behave professionally in the world of social media. The observed behaviour of many young people online is to be either sexy, agressive or funny - as it being yourself isn't quite enough. More on this topic another time...

After lunch I was presenting again - a logistically difficult session. Trying to give the 70+ delegates in the room a chance to try out an iPad with limited kit and a lot of enthusiasm!
Using Mobile Devices to support Research and Teaching, or 50 reasons why you need an iPad
Katie Piatt: Information Services

Abstract: Mobile devices are becoming increasingly common and sharing and raising awareness of their strengths and limitations allows us to make the most effective use of them. There is a lot of interest and activity looking into how these devices, such as tablet computers and Smartphones can be effectively used in Higher Education to support learning, teaching and research. For this presentation I am focussing on identifying ways in which lecturers and researchers can personally benefit from using these devices, gathering my examples from social networks, journals and personal experience. Attendees will be given the chance to try some devices for themselves and discuss their own experiences, good and bad. Emerging in the field are tangible examples of where these devices have been particular effective. My own research in this area tries to cut through the hype of Apple and my self-admitted passion for shiny gadgets into identifying the advantages (and disadvantages) of these technologies for the University of Brighton. Reading and annotating papers, visual recording and providing student feedback are three of the examples I will demonstrate and invite discussion on.


My slides, which hopefully still have some meaning without a commentary - I suggest you try out the apps in question as you look through it. Especially Brushes (well worth the money).

A full and enthusiastic audience getting excited about mobile tech

Following this I went to another Northbrook session:
What's it got to do with me!
Adrienne Rosen: Northbrook College

Abstract: This will be an interactive workshop exploring aspects of adaptability in a changing environment by opening people's eyes to incorporating new ideas that transcend across subject specialist boundaries. Students on our new FdA Art and Media Programmes at Northbrook College have been shifted out of their comfort zone and into an interdisciplinary rotation. The project funded by the Learning and Teaching Fellowship award set out to discover if Journalism students' creativity was enhanced by attending lectures and workshops in other subjects. The results have been surprising. The rotation may have begun with the familiar cry of 'what's it got to do with me,' but in my subject group, it's ended in an expansion of everyone's knowledge. The aim of the session is to challenge notions of what it is to be interdisciplinary and come up with ideas of how participants might make transitions in their own practice. The project's findings will be presented using journalistic codes and conventions. There will be an interactive element to this workshop using participants' own specialist knowledge. You too may leave knowing what it has to do with you!

In the exercises I worked with an Interior Designer, and we talked about how Interior Design as a subject is already, by it's nature, incredibly cross-disciplinary.

The final keynote was given by Phil Race (Emeritus Professor Leeds Metropolitan University)

Visual recording of Phil's keynote

I enjoyed the way Phil used his slideset as a resource to make his points - jumping about in the slides and making sure we were all along for the ride as he convinced us to agree with him that traditional assessment in HE is broken, and we know what to do to fix it, so we should make the change. Utterly compelling.

Phil seems to blog all his presentations so we can get the slides (and homework!) immediately after the event. Impressive!

Following all this was Pimm's in the sunshine, a fantastic day - thank you.