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 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. This time Marion and I have teamed up with other groups to form an alliance for TwHistory (our project to create virtual reenactments using Twitter).

We are going 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. 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• 10 lesson plans built around historical documents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 for TwHistory here.  Another way to vote for us is by texting 102066 to Pepsi (73774). There is even a Facebook app for voting.

You are allowed to vote for up to 10 projects each day, so please vote for our partners as well. Here is a combined list of our partners, just to make voting easy. You can also support them by texting the following numbers to Pepsi (73774):

Complete a Sculpture Garden & create Public Art with the REV Wildcats!
Text 102048

“Lay a Foundation of FITness in our Community”
Text 101377

Develop programming and curriculum for a free multi-arts school in MN.
Text 102340

Without Vision a People Perish; provide quality fine art performances
Text 102320

HEAL THE NATION: Featuring inspiring student role models & heroes
Text 100511

Creatively fund community needs through the arts.
Text 100505

Save thousands of animal lives with new low cost spay/neuter clinic.
Text 100506

Open POP! Performing Arts Outreach Camp Program for Underserved Kids
Text 100843

Support underprivileged children and their dream to play sports.
Text 100847

Build a new playground for some very deserving kids in Las Vegas.
Text 100216

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?

Mobile Learning, Openness, Web 2.0, twitter 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?

Conferences, twitter Brett Shelton, icls2010, marion jensen, poster, twhistory, Victory Lee

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?

Conferences, twitter marion jensen, rob barton, titanic, ttix, 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.

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Openness, twitter open education, Open textbooks, tweets

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

Conferences, twitter conference, new media, nmc, nml2010, twhistory, virtual reality, vr

One of the advantages of growing up as a global nomad is that I have lived for extended periods of time in a variety of countries. I have witnessed many different ways people speak, act, look, dress, and do things. I have learned to accept and even enjoy this diversity. As global exchanges of many kinds become more common I see an increased need for tolerance between people. One way to achieve tolerance in the face of cultural, political, and religious differences is to understand and appreciate the backgrounds and perspectives of others.

Tolerance and cultural appreciation can also be learned by exploring past events, noting one’s own historical cultural shifts as well as those of others. TwHistory.org is a project to create historical reenactments by researching journals and other primary source documents, and then sharing the events via Twitter, as if they were happening in the present. By setting up a Twitter account for each historical figure, individual perspective can be represented. Already, events such as the Battle of Gettysburg, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the failed attempt at German unification in 1848 have already been reenacted using Twitter. I think a cross-cultural historical reenactment would be a great next step. There are teachers and researchers interested in TwHistory in Germany, Switzerland, England and the USA — so I think an international TwHistory reenactment is possible. I see it as a way to work through difficult events, such as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Think of it as historical therapy. My hope is that by exploring different perspectives of the past we can move towards appreciating diversity and embracing tolerance in the present and future.

Related Posts:

• Let’s Ban Paper Too: What Public Schools 1.0 Can Learn From Web 2.0
• Historical Reenactments – Teaching with Twitter
• An opportunity for TwHistory
• TwHistory at ICLS 2010
• TTIX 2010 TwHistory Presentation: Tweeting From the Titanic

Openness, twitter culture, diversity, history, therapy, tolerance, twhistory

Most folks don’t realize that some aspects of crisis response can be done from anywhere in the world using social media tools. Donating money is important, but it’s not the only way to help. I participated in an education panel at the Relief 2.0 for Haiti conference at Stanford last Friday as part of Stanford’s eWeek. It was amazing to see such a diverse group of talented people, united by a desire to help more efficiently using various forms of technology. There were folks from Google Health (I bet you didn’t know there was such a thing), Harvard Operational Medicine Institute, ESRI (Geographic Information Systems experts), and many others (list of speakers and links).

There were many great ideas and projects shared — too many to mention them all (although I tried to capture many of the links using delicious tag “rlf2haiti“). One example of how technology can be used in agile crisis response is the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and Operational Medicine Institute’s use of iPhones to collect patient data. An existing app, iChart, was modified to allow relief workers to collect photos as well as electronic medical information in clinics. One specific need was the ability to locate amputees in order to provide follow up visits once prosthetics become available. Representatives from Sutter Health also shared expertise on ambulatory electronic health records. (Interestingly, Sutter Health also recently made the largest disaster-relief donation in the history of the health care system. Now that’s a company I want as my health care provider.) A group called CrisisCommons shared several project at the conference including  WeHaveWeNeed, a site for connecting resources with needs in Haiti, and Tradui, a Kreyol to English mobile app.

Read more…

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Web 2.0, twitter "agile crisis response", relief2.0, rlf2chile, rlf2haiti, socialmedia

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.

Related Posts:

• 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
• New Media and Learning Symposium: WoW!

Instructional_Technology, PhD, twitter dissertation, twhistory

First I want to share one more article about the Twitter History project I’m involved with that came out in this morning’s local newspaper:  http://hjnews.townnews.com/articles/2010/01/13/news/news05-01-13-10.prt. Journalist Arie Kirk did a nice job describing the project. Best-selling author Annette Lyon also wrote about her involvement in TwHistory here on her blog, and it’s a great read.

But there’s always more to the story, which is one of the things I love about history. Here’s a little glimpse of what’s been going on behind the scenes as volunteer authors gear up for the Mormon Overland Trail reenactment using a Google groups page:

Laurie: Does anyone understand the concept behind the ten-mile stakes, as in ”Put up the fifth ten miles stake.” Do they count these per week?

Annette: I have no idea how often they did these, but it sounds like they’re putting up markers every ten miles for those who come behind. Someone–I can’t remember who–built a pretty sophisticated odometer to track the miles.

Marion: That was Appleton Harmon who created the odometer, I believe. I think he got tired of counting the rag tied to wagon wheel. I’m not sure what they mean by the fifth. They wouldn’t have done that in one day, so maybe they were tracking by week?

Josi: I think they meant a fifth of whiskey; that’s about what I would need about every 10 miles to get from Winter Quarters to Salt Lake.

Marion: LOL

Rob: I think we might be surprised to see how often that was the case.  :) There’s a story from Robert Gardner, one of my ancestors, while working on the temple.  He had a big gash cut in his leg from a log coming down a chute up in the mountains.  Porter Rockwell was helping him out and gave him some whiskey.  Rob told that he started pouring it on his leg to clean the wound, and Porter told him that it was for him to drink, so he did both.

If you would like to join in on the fun please contact us via the TwHistory.org site or leave me a comment. What would you like to reenact next?

Related Posts:

• UNESCO Conference on Open Social Learning
• Presenting TwHistory at International Seminar of UNESCO Chair in E-Learning
• An opportunity for TwHistory
• TwHistory at ICLS 2010
• TTIX 2010 TwHistory Presentation: Tweeting From the Titanic

twitter open social learning, reenactments, twhistory

Sometimes it’s frustrating not having a PhD yet. It certainly makes getting funding for projects a lot harder. Occasionally there are opportunities like the Talis Incubator for Open Education that don’t require a PhD for the application process, but those are pretty rare, and I have to wonder how many “independents” actually get funded.

Enter Kickstarter.com. A beautifully simple way to raise money for projects of all kinds. Check out Kickstarter’s blog for examples of some really creative projects that have been funded so far. From Detroit real estate investing by the inch to pre-paid book writing (ahem, Marion), the list goes on. Read more…

Related Posts:

• 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
• New Media and Learning Symposium: WoW!

twitter fundraising, Kickstarter, PhD, twhistory