History on Twitter

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There was an interesting article in the NY Times on Monday about a history fan who is using Twitter to “live-tweet” the events of WWII as if they were happening in real time.  The Twitter feed now has hundreds of thousands of followers.

The “live-tweeting” of historic events gives them a real-time urgency and feel.  As Timothy Snyder, a professor at Yale said “People in the past weren’t living in the past, they were living in their own present.  These kinds of tweets restore to the past the authentically confusing character of the present.”

The article also links to TwHistory (“Those who forget history are doomed to re-tweet it”) and the Washington Post’s Civil War “live-tweeting” that shows how the Civil War unfolded day by day 150 years ago.

I think both of these projects, and many of the links on the NYTimes article to other projects, could be useful in WHII or USHistory classes.  They could spark an inspiration for a classroom project on twitter that could capture students interest as they “live-tweeted” a historic event or era, or even used twitter’s 140-character posts as a “micro-review” for midterms.

tags: twitter history web2.0

tags: twitter history civil war

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Enrolling students and guests in your Moodle course

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Nothing fancy, but here’s a few quick videos that will walk you through setting up Enrollment codes, enrolling students in your course, and allowing Guest access to your Moodle course.

Step 1: Set up a Student-Enrollment code for you course

Step 2: Have students log into Moodle (with their Novell logins and passwords) and join your course with the Enrollment code

Step 3: If you choose, you can also allow “Guest Access” for your course. Guests won’t be able to post to forums, take quizzes, see grades, or other activities in your Moodle course, but Guests can see the topics, labels, and resources you add to your course. Guest Access is not required.

Please let me know if you have any questions as you start your Moodle course. We’ll add to this collection of Moodle tutorial videos throughout the year.

October’s Tech “Thursdays”: Google Search Strategies

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Here’s my “google search story” as a preview for next week’s Tech Thursdays on better search strategies.  If you want to learn more about improving google search for you and your students (or if you want to learn how to make a “google search story” video as a teaser for your next unit) stop on by the ITRT office next week.