Tom's Two Cents

(Note: This blog post is meant to be read while listening to Midnight Oil’s “Sell My Soul.”

Dear Google,

I just want to say thanks for the wonderful Buzz you have given me. Not that you haven’t already cached and parsed every tweet I ever made on Twitter, but Buzz has helped me to recognize and accept my sole reliance on you. You know who I email. You know who my friends are. You know where I am all day long thanks to the GPS in my Android phone. I’ve sold my digital soul to you in every possible way (except photos — Flickr is still better). Now I’ll be coming to you every few minutes for the Buzz I need to get me though my day. Finally, I look forward to the day when you will use all the information I have happily given you to serve me ads for all sorts of wonderful things — before I realize how much I need them. I thank you in advance for this. You already know how much I hate shopping.

Your Truly,

Tom

PS – I am not kissing up because my Gmail storage is more than half full. Of course, if you magically added, say 10 gigabytes, it would help me to know that you are really listening (or parsing, at least).

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Google, Random Thoughts Buzz, Google, microblogging, twitter

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.

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

People will bet on anything. From horses and cars to American Idol contestants and presidential candidates. At this year’s Games+Learning+Society Conference 5.0 I have enjoyed playing BackChatter, a game of trendwatching and betting on popular keywords in the Twitter backchannel. The idea is relatively simple. Before a keynote or session, each player sends a direct message with three words to an automated Twitter account. The point value drops as more people pick the same keyword, so originality is encouraged. At the end of the session or keynote, points are “paid out” to each player based on how many times their words were used. An online leader board makes everything nice and competitive. The results were displayed on several screens at the GLS conference.

For anyone who thinks this is a distraction, I can only offer my own experience with the game. Prior to the last keynote, I actually found myself reading Rich Halverson’s CV and an abstract of his book to prepare my keyword bets. I was more engaged than ever in the sessions, trying to detect trends I could use for future bets in the game. So while this is clearly anecdotal evidence, the game worked for me. LibraryRemix points out that because this activity develops skills in trendwatching, it could be powerful in schools as well:

What if your students were compelled to pre-analyze a discussion, predict trends (places they believe their peers will focus their attention during that discussion) AND perhaps empowered to influence those trends themselves, simply by participating in the conversation?  Heady hands-on experience!

I have hung out in many a Twitter backchannel at plenty of conferences (in case you haven’t heard, I’m the reigning Grand Poobah of Social Media from TTIX 09). BackChatter is the most effective, engaging idea I have seen for encouraging meaningful activity on Twitter. Kudos to all who were involved in this project! I hope you will share your project with other conference organizers.

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Conferences, twitter backchannel, betting, game, gls, gls09, trendwatching, 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:

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