Tom's Two Cents

A few months ago I helped a friend win the Pepsi Refresh Challenge, which gave $25,000 to one of my favorite music associations, the Associate of Redlands Bowl. The following month he did it again, this time at the $50K level. The basic idea is that there is strength in numbers. So TwHistory has teamed up with other groups to form an alliance by supporting each others’ projects.

We are competing for a $25K grant for TwHistory and we have a month to collect all the daily votes we can. It’s simple: if we are in the top 10 with the most votes at the $25K level at the end of the month, we get the funding. We are currently ranked #16 out of over a thousand entries, so we are definitely in the running. Here are our deliverables:

• 10 lesson plans built around historical documents
• 1 example of a virtual historical reenactment (Sinking of the Titanic)
• 1 ‘how to’ video posted on our site for educators to learn the TwHistory process

Vote early and often

Vote for TwHistory and its partners here.  You can sign in using your Facebook account, so it’s really easy. You are allowed to vote for up to 10 projects each day, so please vote for our partners as well.

Extra Credit:

You can also support us by texting the following numbers to Pepsi (73774):

Create virtual reenactments via Twitter
Text 102066 to Pepsi (73774)

Complete a Sculpture Garden & create Public Art with the REV Wildcats!
Text 102048 to Pepsi (73774)

“Lay a Foundation of FITness in our Community”
Text 101377 to Pepsi (73774)

Develop programming and curriculum for a free multi-arts school in MN.
Text 102340 to Pepsi (73774)

Without Vision a People Perish; provide quality fine art performances
Text 102320 to Pepsi (73774)

HEAL THE NATION: Featuring inspiring student role models & heroes
Text 100511 to Pepsi (73774)

Creatively fund community needs through the arts.
Text 100505 to Pepsi (73774)

Save thousands of animal lives with new low cost spay/neuter clinic.
Text 100506 to Pepsi (73774)

Open POP! Performing Arts Outreach Camp Program for Underserved Kids
Text 100843 to Pepsi (73774)

Support underprivileged children and their dream to play sports.
Text 100847 to Pepsi (73774)

Build a new playground for some very deserving kids in Las Vegas.
Text 100216 to Pepsi (73774)

Thanks for voting! For daily reminders and links, add me to your Twitter or Facebook. Forward, march!!

Related Posts:

• TwHistory at ICLS 2010
• TTIX 2010 TwHistory Presentation: Tweeting From the Titanic
• Let’s Ban Paper Too: What Public Schools 1.0 Can Learn From Web 2.0
• New Media and Learning Symposium: WoW!
• Teaching Tolerance through TwHistory?

I’ll be sharing a poster on TwHistory at the International Conference of the Learning Sciences 2010 this week with Brett Shelton, Victor Lee, and Marion Jensen (see the sneak peek below). If you’re curious about how we create historical reenactments on Twitter, visit TwHistory.org for more information, FAQs and a directory of our current reenactments. I’m very happy to see an ICLS Twitter channel all set up and ready to go. I’m looking forward to using it!

Related Posts:

• TTIX 2010 TwHistory Presentation: Tweeting From the Titanic
• An opportunity for TwHistory
• Let’s Ban Paper Too: What Public Schools 1.0 Can Learn From Web 2.0
• New Media and Learning Symposium: WoW!
• Teaching Tolerance through TwHistory?

Earlier this month Marion Jensen, Rob Barton, and I did a TwHistory presentation at TTIX 2010 (Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange). It was a great conference, and Michael Johnson is the new Grand Poobah. Congratulations!

Our “Tweeting from the Titanic” workshop began with a presentation to familiarize participants with how we use Twitter to share historical reenactments (we call it TwHistory). During the second half of the workshop participants researched several characters from the Titanic crew and quickly created nearly 100 tweets that were scheduled and shared that night at dinner. Due to the lack of time, we allowed participants to take some liberties during the workshop, creating a sort of virtual role play based on first-hand accounts. You can see the Titanic resources we prepared, as well as the Titanic Tweets Google Spreadsheet we used to coordinate it all. While we weren’t able to broadcast the tweets on the exact day of the tragic sinking (April 15), we tried our best to tweet at the appropriate times, adjusted for our timezone (GMT-6). I would love to extend this and prepare a more robust, historically sound version for the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, which will take place on April 15, 2012.

I should also mention that there is another TwHistory workshop coming up in October at the 2010 AECT convention in Anaheim, CA. We are preparing a reenactment of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and participants will have the opportunity to create some of the tweets for Black Sunday (October 27th), which happens to be the day of our session. I’m looking forward to that one! Here are the details of our AECT workshop:

11-R6:

TwHistory Workshop: Tweeting the Cuban Missile Crisis

Workshop participants will be introduced to TwHistory, a framework for creating and sharing historical reenactments with Twitter. They will be guided through the process of researching and creating tweets for the historical figures they will represent in an online Cuban Missile Crisis reenactment. The combined tweets will form a reenactment that will be shared via Twitter and TwHistory.org during the 2010 AECT conference and coinciding with the 48th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Related Posts:

• TwHistory at ICLS 2010
• An opportunity for TwHistory
• Let’s Ban Paper Too: What Public Schools 1.0 Can Learn From Web 2.0
• New Media and Learning Symposium: WoW!
• Teaching Tolerance through TwHistory?

In honor of my 140th blog post on http://tomcaswell.com, I am posting a few tweets I just submitted to the College Open Textbook Community in response to their call. (The call is still open if you are interested in submitting tweets for their book.) This is my first time blogging tweets so bear with me…

My Tweets on Open Education

1) What is Open?
Open is the natural habitat for educational materials. Imparting knowledge implies sharing it. The ideal environment for education is open.

2) Why Author an Open Textbook?
To author an Open Textbook is to give something back, to replenish the pool of education from which we ourselves have drunk so deeply.

An Open Textbook is the new currency in a reputation-based economy. It survives w/o the protective vacuum of copyright. In fact, it thrives.

3) Why Adopt an Open Textbook?
Open Textbooks should be adopted for their quality, affordability, adaptability, portability, scalability, and accessibility.

4) How to Adopt an Open Textbook?
Tell your administrators why you want to adopt an Open Textbook, join with others in the OER movement, build support, & overcome barriers.

5) Why Should Your College/University Care?
Because Open Textbooks are part of a growing movement towards education affordability that makes sense & is supported by the US Dept. of Ed.

6) How Does the Student Benefit?
Students benefit now from educational affordability & later by having high quality educational resources available to review at any time.

7) Where are we Headed?
We are headed towards educational affordability and openness, where quality content can be created, rated, shared, & adapted by all.

Related Posts:

• CA’s Digital Open Source Library and WA’s Open Course Library
• Learning Resource Metadata Initiative Announced
• Schema.org + OER = Mmmm Good!
• YouTube + Creative Commons = Awesome!
• Will publishers engage with open textbooks?

Augmented Reality in the Classroom - NML Presentation by Craig Kapp

I go to a lot of conferences. And I have given a number of presentations in the past few years — almost 30 of them (I think that’s a lot for a grad student). Today Craig Kapp’s presentation called “Augmented Reality in Learning” absolutely blew me away. I have never seen (well, virtually seen) a session with so much energy!

This year’s NMC Symposium on New Media and Learning was help entirely in a private instance of Second Life, a virtual world called “Hakone.” It was great to present TwHistory with Marion Jensen, alongside new media greats like Constance Steinkuehler, Brett Bixler, and Craig Kapp. A big thank you to Larry, Alan, and all the organizers! I have posted photos of the conference as well. For me, this experience shattered any notion that a virtual conference is somehow less engaging or interesting. Au contraire!

Back to Craig Kapp. In all his spare time as a full-time doctoral student at NYU (I can relate), Craig is working on ZooBurst, an AR storytelling tool that lets anyone create their own 3D pop-up book. He invited those who are interested to take part in the public beta. (I had signed up before his talk was over.)

Read more…

Related Posts:

• UNESCO Conference on Open Social Learning
• An opportunity for TwHistory
• TwHistory at ICLS 2010
• TTIX 2010 TwHistory Presentation: Tweeting From the Titanic
• Let’s Ban Paper Too: What Public Schools 1.0 Can Learn From Web 2.0