Tom Caswell

Listen. Share. Learn.

Tag: twhistory

  • New Media and Learning Symposium: WoW!

    Augmented Reality in the Classroom - NML Presentation by Craig Knapp
    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.)

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  • Recent celebrations…

    Sorry if this comes off as bragging, but I am very grateful for all the media mentions and other opportunities that have come my way over the past couple months. I’ve decided to do a brain dump here before I forget everything. Here we go:

    1. MIT, USU, eduCommons, and enPraxis were all mentioned in the January issue of EDU TECH, a higher ed magazine in India. The entire magazine is available here: http://issuu.com/eduindia/docs/january_2010.

    2. The local Herald Journal newspaper did a nice article on the TwHistory.org project in January: http://news.hjnews.com/news/article_82e18eda-2b7e-56b8-9f0d-b31cb9acd272.html.

    3. There was another article in the Herald Journal a couple weeks ago on some efforts I got involved with via Stanford to use Web 2.0 ideas to help provide crisis relief in Haiti and Chile. They had me talk on education, but I mainly touched on my vision for micro-learning in the short term. I spoke of “Train the Trainer” types of activities that could be implemented to spread basic skills and knowledge so the progress doesn’t stop when the aid workers leave. http://news.hjnews.com/features/article_7b8e2eda-2b9f-11df-9864-001cc4c002e0.html

    4. Last week I interviewed Martha Kanter, Under Secretary of the US Department of Education last week about Open Educational Resources (OER). It’s a long story how I got this opportunity, but I think it’s significant. Under Secretary Kanter is directly under Arnie Duncan in the Obama Administration, responsible for higher ed. The interview was published today in the OCW Consortium March 2010 Newsletter. I have attached a PDF as well. It is noteworthy that with the passage of the Health Care and Education Affordability Act, approximately $3 billion in federal funding ($600,000,000/year for 5 years) has been allocated to states, non-profits, and other institutions for educational programs and projects to boost the college graduation rate and lower cost of post-secondary education. Open Educational Resources projects such as Open Textbooks fall into this category. Interestingly, Martha Kanter has been involved with OER efforts for over a decade, so it is likely that some OER programs will get a big boost from the current administration.

    5. I co-wrote a grant proposal with Marion Jensen (another INST PhD student) to the Talis Incubator (a private organization that is funding innovative projects in Open Education space) to develop TwHistory.org, a site for online historical reenactments using Twitter. Our TwHistory proposal has made it to the final round, and was one of only eight proposals selected to advance.

    6. I also helped write another Talis grant proposal with enPraxis, this one is focused on converting content packages between educational repositories. It too has advanced to the final round. I am thrilled that USU has two of the final eight spots in a very competitive round of Open Education funding. I expect that three of the eight finalists will be funded.

  • Teaching Tolerance through TwHistory?

    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 developed 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.

  • Thinking about a TwHistory dissertation

    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.

  • The (even more) Fun Side of 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?