Tom's Two Cents

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:

• The (even more) Fun Side of TwHistory
• TwHistory.org Fund Raising with Kickstarter.com
• UNESCO Conference on Open Social Learning
• Presenting TwHistory at International Seminar of UNESCO Chair in E-Learning
• Historical Reenactments – Teaching with Twitter

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
• Thinking about a TwHistory dissertation
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• Historical Reenactments – Teaching with Twitter

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:

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• Historical Reenactments – Teaching with Twitter

twitter fundraising, Kickstarter, PhD, twhistory

IMG_5600, originally uploaded by caswell_tom.

I really enjoyed being part of the UNESCO Chair in E-Learning conference on Open Social Learning last week with my friend and colleague, Marion Jensen. We presented TwHistory, a project that Marion started and I have been involved with during 2009, and it involves reenacting historical events using Twitter. Jeff Young posted a nice summary of the TwHistory project on the Wired Campus Blog of The Chronicle of Higher Education, although he gave me more credit than I deserve. TwHistory was Marion’s idea from the beginning; I was fortunate enough to have gotten involved early on in the development of that idea.

For more about the UNECSO Chair in E-Learning conference I will refer you to José Mota’s excellent conference summary. This was my fourth time visiting Barcelona over the past 18 months, and I feel very lucky to have had all those opportunities. Barcelona has quickly become one of my favorite cities in the world, and the wonderful people at UOC are big part of why I feel that way. Thank you to Emma, Julia, and all the organizers at UOC for an excellent conference. You have given me a lot to think about, and I look forward to future opportunities to share and discuss the future of Open Social Learning.

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Conferences, twitter conference, eLChair09, open social learning, twhistory, UNESCO, UOC

Last week I met Emma Kiselyova, Executive Director of the UNESCO Chair in E-Learning at the Open University of Catalonia. Somehow we got talking about the historical reenactments Marion Jensen and others have been doing at TwHistory.com. Today I am thrilled that we have been invited to present the project at the 6th Annual International Seminar of UNESCO Chair in E-Learning next month in Barcelona. The focus of the seminar this year will be Open Social Leaning, and I think TwHistory will provide a nice example of what can be done with relatively simple, social tools. Here is the proposal:

The TwHistory project began in early 2009 with the first Twitter reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg over a period of several weeks. While history is considered a boring subject by some, others find a great deal of satisfaction in reenacting important moments in history, dressing in old uniforms and marching on preserved battlefields. TwHistory is based on the idea that historical reenactments can take place online and have the same positive effects for volunteer participants and virtual onlookers.

Read more…

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twitter historical reenactments, open social learning, twhistory, twitter

I received an email from a school teacher interested in reenacting parts of the Cuban Missile Crisis using several accounts as “actors.” My friend Marion Jensen came up with the concept in early 2009, and together we started the website TwHistory.com. Earlier this summer he single-handedly recreated the Battle of Gettysburg. Since there seems to be some interest in this kind of Twitter reenactment I thought I would explain the process for those who are interested. The technology behind a project like this is fairly simple, and everything but the web hosting is free. Most of the time spent involves researching the events, which is where the real learning happens. Here are the three basic elements to set up a “TwHistory” reenactment project:

1. Setting up your Twitter “character” accounts:
Think of your project as a play, and make a list of all the characters you will need. Each of these will need a separate Twitter account, and each account requires a different email address. So you will need several different email addresses to register multiple Twitter accounts. (If you use Gmail, there is a trick to get around this problem. You can fool Twitter into thinking you are using a different email address by adding “+1″ or “+something” to your Gmail address. An example would be yourname+something@gmail.com. So if you have 10 Twitter characters you need to set up, you can register one as yourname+1@gmail.com and then register another one with yourname+2@gmail.com, and so on. Gmail will ignore the + and everything after it and promptly deliver a confirmation email for each of your character accounts to yourname@gmail.com.) Before you get started you will also want to set up a main Twitter account and then use it to follow the “Twitter characters” in your project. I called mine “HistoricTweets.” Don’t follow anyone else with this account (other than your characters) and don’t tweet from the project Twitter account or those tweets will show up as well. (Frankly it’s a little tricky to erase an accidental tweet, since it involves digging into the mySQL database to find and delete the problem entry.)

2. Archiving Tweets on a single web page:
This is not really a necessity, but it’s nice to be able to show all the tweets in one place, especially to people who don’t use Twitter. Before you can do this part you will need a web hosting provider that can support PHP and mySQL (most can). Something inexpensive like BlueHost.com is fine. I used a free program called Twitster to capture all the tweets. Setting up Twitster is easier than setting up a WordPress blog, so if terms like PHP and mySQL are somewhat familiar to you, then you can probably do it. Download Twitster (http://plasticmind.com/twitster) and set it up using the project Twitter account and following the instructions in the README.txt file (included below). Be sure to leave the hash tag field blank in the setup wizard so that all tweets from anyone your follow with the project account will appear on your Twitster page. The tweets show up with the newest ones first, and there’s not much you can do about that unless you are a programmer. Here are a couple examples:
http://twhistory.com/gettysburg/
http://tomcaswell.com/historictweets/

From the Twitster Installation Guide:
1. Upload the Twitster files into the directory you want to use. (e.g. http://mysite.com/twitster/)
2. Bring up that location in your browser. Twitster will bring up a setup wizard the first time you access it.
NOTE: You may need to make your make your Twitster directory writable (777) so the wizard can create your configuration file. For security’s sake, once you run the wizard, you should delete setup.php and set the main directory permissions back to something safer, like 755.
3. Fill in the setup form. Leave the hash tag field empty if you want to display all the tweets for those you are following. Click “Set Up Twitster”. You’re done!

3. Scheduling Tweets:
Being able to schedule tweets ahead of time is very useful, especially if you are reenacting an even with many characters tweeting around the same time. The best free tweet scheduler program I have found is called TweetMaster (http://www.twtmstr.com) It was developed by a fellow contributor to the TwHistory.com project, and now it seems to have a few extra bells and whistles. This app lets you schedule tweets down to the minute, so recreating an even like the Cuban Missile Crisis could be really exciting (especially when events happen in rapid succession). The other thing I like about this app is that you can set up multiple twitter accounts into groups for easy tweet scheduling. I highly recommend testing whatever timed tweet app you decide to use with a couple fake accounts. That way you know what it can and can’t do for you.

I hope this helps others get started with Twitter History or other reenactment projects. Please leave me a comment and let me know if you are doing a Twitter project so I can link to it from TwHistory.com.

Related Posts:

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• Press Release: Tweeting the Civil War on Twhistory.com
• Thinking about a TwHistory dissertation
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How To's, twitter history, microlearning, reenactment, teaching, twhistory, twitter

Here is a press release that went out to Wired, CNN, AP, and some other media outlets earlier today. I hope it gets picked up by one of them. It’s been a fun project so far, and this is just the beginning. Enjoy!

Contact: TOM CASWELL
Email: caswell [dot] tom [at] gmail [dot] com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
9 A.M. MST, April 28, 2009

TWEETING THE CIVIL WAR
LOGAN, UTAH, APRIL 27, 2009: TWHISTORY.COM introduces the Civil War to a techno-savvy generation using actual 19th century journals cropped down to twitter-size updates. Now users can follow the day-by-day accounts of the Civil War from actual participants, all on Twitter.

Twitter, a microblogging tool that allows users to send updates in 140 characters or less, might be a relatively new tool, but Marion Jensen, Director of OpenCourseWare at Utah State University, thinks that by applying the tool to the 19th century, people can gain new appreciation for Civil War history.

Using original sources such as diaries and journals of soldiers in the battle, Jensen and other volunteers tweet what that person did on a particular day. “So if a particular soldier had beans for breakfast on April 26, 1863, I twitter for that person on April 26, 2009: ‘had beans for breakfast.’”  Jensen says. Each soldier will be at or near Gettysburg at the time of famous Civil War Battle. The soldiers can be followed at http://twhistory.com

Jensen says that by following many soldiers over the course of days and weeks, one can really get a feel for what life was like back in the Civil war. “Each person doesn’t say a lot, but when you read all of the tweets in concert, you begin to get a picture of the whole story.”

Jensen is twittering both Union soldiers and generals, as well as those who fought for the Confederacy. “We are also twittering a newspaper, as well as President Lincoln.”

Jensen says he will follow these characters through the Battle of Gettysburg, in early July. “After the Gettysburg, we may continue on with these characters, or we may start a new project. Possible future projects include the Cuban Missile Crisis or the proceedings of the Continental Congress.”

Related Posts:

• Presenting TwHistory at International Seminar of UNESCO Chair in E-Learning
• Historical Reenactments – Teaching with Twitter
• Thinking about a TwHistory dissertation
• Dear Google…
• The (even more) Fun Side of TwHistory

Mobile Learning, Web 2.0, twitter civil war, social media, twhistory, twitter