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• 10 lesson plans built around historical documents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!!

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.

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.

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.)

Here are some of the video clips Craig shared during his presentation. Highly recommended for those interested in augmented reality (AR):

AR Example http://media.nmc.org/2010/03/ar-examples.mov
AR Book http://media.nmc.org/2010/03/augmented-books.mov
Physics http://media.nmc.org/2010/03/physics.mov
Simsnails http://media.nmc.org/2010/03/sim-snails.mov
Whisperdeck http://media.nmc.org/2010/03/whisperdeck.mov
Zoo Burst http://media.nmc.org/2010/03/zooburst.mov

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.

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.

One of the most interesting projects that was shared was Mission 4636, which allows people in Haiti to text their requests for medical care, food, water, and shelter. Many people in Haiti have cell phones, and It’s a little known fact that cell phones still worked in the hours after the earthquake. The 4636, toll-free number was set up to established to meet the urgent needs of the Haitian people. Mission 4636 connect volunteer Kreyol translators to convert the messages into English so relief workers can respond. Here is how it works (from the Ushahidi blog):

People in Haiti text location, name and requests for aid / reports etc. to 4636.

The data is streamed from different celtels to a server hosted by Ushahidi.

100s of Kreyol-speaking volunteers translate, categorize and plot the geocoords of the location if possible.

The structured data is streamed to different orgs on the ground like Red Cross and InSTEDD, who act on it / pass it to appropriate people there.

It is also streamed to the main Ushahidi database (the publicly viewable one) where it is combined with other data, further annotated etc. and made available to other orgs.

If there was a central message that came out of the conference, it was the importance of including locals in solutions in crisis relief, especially in long-term rebuilding efforts. Aid workers are here today and gone tomorrow — or in a few months, anyway. Many of the larger aid organizations are simply not set up to cooperate with others. They do good things but they cannot offer agile crisis response. Carlos mentioned how UN workers were not allowed to drive anyone else in their vehicles, even if there was space in the vehicle and someone was going to the same location. I guess the UN is not big on carpooling, even in a crisis. In contrast, much of the work done by SF-based Inveneo focuses on identifying and certifying ICT partners in-country. Inveneo was responsible for setting up a long-distance wifi system to allow relief organizations to communicate days after the earthquake. (Note to self: add Inveneo to list of companies I want to work for someday.)

Many of the ideas shared at the Relief 2.0 conference involved reusing existing tools to meet urgent needs in a crisis. These include tools we use every day, like SMS, Google Maps, and Twitter. Many of the same tools will also apply to rendering assistance in the aftermath of the earthquake in Chile, which hit less than a day after the conference ended. The hashtah #rlf2haiti was used during the conference, and now #rlf2chile is also being used on Twitter. There is also a Relief 2.0 Google Group. If you are looking for a way to help, I highly recommend getting involved with the folks at CrisisCommons.org. Thanks to Carlos Miranda Levy, Margarita Quihuis (both Stanford University Fellows), and all the coordinators for a fantastic job organizing the Relief 2.0 conference.

Edit: Just came across a ReadWriteWeb article on 4636 back in early February called Disaster Response from the Cloud.

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.

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?

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.

So Marion tells me he wants to use Kickstarter to fund the work we have been planning for TwHistory.com (including scheduling tweets, translating and replaying past reenactments, etc).

I think it’s a great idea, but most of the Kickstarter projects offer some sort of reward to motivate people. What reward do we give to those who are willing to donate to TwHistory? We don’t have much, but at least we can offer them a cool badge for their blog (see below). Folks who make larger pledges get shirts and sponsorships too.

If you can make a pledge, please do. Here’s the link to the TwHistory.org Kickstarter page. It’s an all-or-nothing fund raiser, so the project only gets funded if we make our goal.

The proceeds will go to programming the new TwHistory site. In other words, I won’t get any of it. So why do I care? Because I think TwHistory is a great way to make history fun, especially for young people with laptops, cell phones, and short attention spans.

Plus I intend to study the use of TwHistory to finish my PhD.

Tanks!