I am interested in using micro-blogging as a way to get students exploring and sharing bits of primary source documents. TwHistory seems to work particularly well with events that were documented with journals. Each student or group is assigned to a historical figure in a particular event. The students prepare and schedule a series of messages, or “tweets,” describing the event from their perspective using primary source documents. The messages from the various characters in the event are triggered chronologically and result in a virtual reenactment that can be shared with others via the Internet. The student-generated simulations are stored at TwHistory.org, a site I helped create with Marion Jensen, another doctoral student at Utah State University. Of course, other tools could be used, but we have selected Twitter for now because it has a large user base. Also, the 140-character limit forces students to make decisions about what to include in their messages.
George Orwell wrote, “History is written by the winners.” Part of the goal of TwHistory is to present more than the dominant voice in retelling past events. In wars, for example, soldiers from both sides kept journals from which we can draw different perspectives. An example of this can be found in the Battle of Gettysburg reenactment we organized last year. Participants researched journals from both Union and Confederate soldiers and leaders.
The TwHistory project is less than a year old, but has already attracted some local, national, and international attention. Several friendly collaborations have formed with teachers and researchers in Missouri, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, and England. A high school Cold War History teacher in Missouri used our model to reenact the Cuban Missile Crisis with her students, and sent us some positive feedback on the results, but these preliminary efforts need to be followed up by more systematic research. If you have research suggestions or other thoughts, please leave me a comment.
Update: Marion and I will be presenting TwHistory at UCET in Salt Lake City this Saturday Morning (Feb. 27) at 9:15 am. More info on UCET here.
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Instructional_Technology, PhD, twitter dissertation, twhistory
A note to those who cares about Instructional Technology and improving real, live classrooms: I would love your feedback. 
In their article Creating a Framework for Research On Systemic Technology Innovations, Fishman et al. describe a “usability cube” and state that its purpose is to “predict the difficulty any particular innovation faces in the adoption process (p. 52). ” This is an ambitious claim that caught my attention.
The three axes represented by the cube are capability, culture, and policy and management. Fishman et al. state, “The distance between the innovation and the origin represents the gap that exists between the capacity required to successfully use the innovation and the current capacity of the district (p. 51).” The authors claim that improving usability is a case of closing the gap. Kudos to Fishman et al. for stating the obvious — and for doing it in 3D! This may be a nice visual for some, but I question its usefulness. What have the authors told me with a cube graphic that they couldn’t have told me with three bullet points? Of course technology innovations need to address capability, culture, and policy of the target school and school district. That is basic market research. Who would design and implement a product without carefully considering the target user and the systems that affect that user’s environment? The real question we should be asking is how do we do this?
I can only conclude that this article is aimed at academic researchers who are so caught up in their own grant-funded worlds that they have lost sight of the needs that they set out to address. And yet the challenges of obtaining buy-in from faculty, administrators, and even students are not always obvious. It might be valuable to invite a marketing specialist to write about successful strategies that have been used to introduce an innovation into a school district. It would be equally useful to hear from administrators and teachers who have worked with researchers, and who could point out best practices and identify potential pitfalls. The more I think of Fishman’s usability cube, the more I can visualize the cylinders that represent institutional and departmental silos that prevent real usability and actual transfer from academic research to classroom implementation.
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Instructional_Technology, PhD, eLearning "usability cube" Fishman
So far the USU Instructional Technology department has done a poor job convincing me that I matter as a PhD student within the department. (No, this has nothing to do with COSL or my choice of program chair.) I’ve been at it for a couple years, and I’m not even in the student directory on the INST web page. Other departments I have seen have walls with photos of their students, including their names, where they are from, and when they started the program. We have an online version, and it is completely outdated and boring. But I have a suggestion.
When I visit other departments I see photos of their grad students on their walls. It’s cool to look at, and it sends a message. “Our students matter.” Something like would help us put names with faces. I see the need for both an offline and an online version. And with our online version we could do much better. Why not add rich student profiles to the department’s web page? Like personal blogs, LinkedIn profiles, flickr or Google image accounts, and other things we want to share as part of our online identity? Do you think this would be hard to build? It’s already done. It’s called Ozmozr, and it was built right here in the USU Instructional Technology department. But I bet not many people in the department even know about it.
Don’t get me wrong, I will succeed at my goals regardless of my “headless” department. This is not about students wanting to see their own photos in the hall in front of the Instructional Technology office. It’s about interacting with faculty and grad students and sharing ideas. So an important question for any new department chair should be, “How do we convince students that they are a major focus of this department?” Start with a major overhaul of the INST website. Make the new site compelling and interactive for current students as well as alumni, with rich member profiles that leverage existing (free) online services and encourage sharing and interacting. And, just for old time’s sake, put some student pictures up in the hall as well.
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