Introductory Segment

Tweeting from the Titanic: All Hands On Deck!

Introduction and Purpose:
This session is an invitation to participate in a collaborative historical reenactment using TwHistory. The TwHistory project began in early 2009 with the first Twitter reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg over a period of several weeks. TwHistory is based on the idea that historical reenactments can take place online and have positive effects for volunteer participants and virtual onlookers. In order to organize, study, and preserve these online reenactments a website has been created at http://TwHistory.org.

Objectives:
Participants will be introduced to TwHistory, a framework for creating and sharing historical reenactments with Twitter. They will be placed in groups and guided through the process of researching and creating tweets for several historical figures relating to the Titanic disaster using a variety of sources. These tweets will be combined into a mini-reenactment which will be shared via TwHistory.org.

Practical Applications:
Twitter provides all the necessary elements for a recreating a historical event: actors, communication, and relationships. Followers of Twitter reenactments get updates in real-time as the characters of a particular historical event communicate, or “tweet” about what is happening. Each historical character has a Twitter account with a username that conveys who the character is. The content is researched beforehand and entered into a shared spreadsheet to be reviewed by the project leader. This ensures that volunteers have written appropriate tweets that work well together with the other Twitter characters. Tweets must be 140 characters or less, so abbreviations are often used. Once the length has been checked, the tweets are scheduled with a timer program so they are sent at a specific time. The idea is to match the date and time of the events as closely as possible so that the tweets give followers a sense of how and when events happened. TwHistory reenactments can be organized by a teacher for groups of students or by a hobbyist in an online group, carried out by volunteers.

Information:
In any historical reenactment it is often the actors who get the most benefit, and this is no different with Twitter. And just like traditional reenactments, TwHistory projects have the potential to draw a large audience. Spectating Twitter followers often retweet favorite messages, drawing additional followers to the reenactment. Interest has grown steadily, attracting historians and hobbyists alike. The TwHistory project has attracted the attention of the UNESCO Chair in E-Learning at the Open University of Catalonia, as well as the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library. TwHistory is also being used to teach part of a Cold War History class at a high school in Missouri, and there is similar interest from educators in Switzerland and Germany.

Research is needed to understand what effects historical reenactments using Twitter could have on student engagement and learning, but anecdotal evidence point to positive outcomes in these areas. Open social learning may be a challenge to harness or control in a formal learning environment, but it is an area that is highly relevant today and should be explored.

Hands-on Experience:
Participants will work in small groups to create Tweets from primary source documents. We encourage each person to bring a laptop or other Internet-enabled device, although this is not required to participate. It will be helpful if at least one person in each group can get online.

Hands-On Segment

Presenters

Tom Caswell
PhD Student
Utah State University

Marion Jensen
PhD Student
Utah State University

Dr. Victor Lee
Assistant Professor
Department of Instructional Technology & Learning Sciences
Utah State University

Dr. Brett E. Shelton
Associate Professor
Department of Instructional Technology & Learning Sciences
Utah State University

Rob Barton
CIL Director, PhD Student
Utah State University
Email: rdbarton@gmail.com

Marion Jensen is a Senior Instructional Designer with American Express and the former director of Utah State University’s OpenCourseWare project. He directed the project for four years, as well as created the Utah OCW Alliance, an initiative that comprised of seven universities in Utah with over 150 OCW courses between them. Marion has over ten years of experience with online education.

Tom Caswell is an Open Education consultant. He is founder of Dynamic E-Learning Strategies, Inc. Tom has consulted for the OpenCourseWare Consortium, the Open University of Catalonia, and Creative Commons. Tom also works with a research group at Utah State University. His is particularly interested in mobile learning, Open Educational Resources, and micro-learning using Twitter.

Brett E. Shelton is the Director of the Interactive Design for Instructional Applications and Simulations (IDIAS) Institute. He is also Associate Professor in the Department of Instructional Technology & Learning Sciences at Utah State University. Dr. Shelton’s research interests include localizing and contextualizing of educational resources in relationship to their availability and use and exploring the role technology plays in mediating the understanding of complex concepts and phenomena.

Victor Lee is Assistant Professor in the Department of Instructional Technology & Learning Sciences at Utah State University. Dr. Lee’s work has involved study of external representations in middle school science instruction, conceptual change, and the cognitive clinical interview as a research instrument. Other strands of work include the study of learning that takes place in complex collaborative strategy games and the investigation of ways in which physical activity data recording technologies can be used to support mathematics and science learning in schools.

Rob Barton is the Director of the Computer & Information Literacy program in the Computer Science Department at Utah State University.
He is interested in the use of collaborative technology tools in both education and business contexts, especially as they facilitate the
adoption of appropriate andragogical and constructivist practices in school and the workplace. He has experience in software training,
systems administration, database administration, quality assurance testing, web design, and project management. Rob holds an MBA with an Information Systems emphasis and is pursuing a PhD in Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences at Utah State University. He is
currently researching common computer security problems and ways to encourage end-users to follow best practices to keep their computers
and data secure.