TwHistory: Creating Collaborative Historical Narratives with Social Media
1. Tom Caswell @tom4cam
Marion Jensen @marionjensen
Justin Ball @jbasdf
Dr. Joel Duffin @oxtralite
Rob Barton @robmba
@twhistory
Creating Collaborative Historical
Narratives with Social Media
Funded by the Talis Incubator
for Open Education
2. What is Twitter?
Free status update tool.
What's happening? in 140 characters.
Messages are called tweets.
19% of American internet users are on
Twitter.
4. The Big Idea
Attending conference remotely
Hundreds of people in the Twitter channel
Idea: Real-time, virtual, historical
reenactments using Twitter
5. Objectives
1. Experience history
from multiple
perspectives
2. Gain a sense for the
actual timing of events
3. Appreciate subjective
nature of historical
narratives
6. When History goes viral
Gettysburg reenactment
High School teacher followed
Used in Cold War History course
Boo-yah!
16. Future Directions
Flexible rebroadcasting: compressible
timelines
Use geolocation data to create
reenactment tweet maps
Automate initial localization with Google
Translate (crowdsource it from there)
17. Top 10 Things I Learned from
TwHistory
1. There was a girl who really would stand at the bow of the
Titanic after her nightly escapades.
2. Fort Bridger was just a couple small log cabins.
3. No one really won the Battle of Gettysburg.
4. Never leave the percussion cap on the hammer of your rifle.
5. If you don't burn towns as you march through them, the
ladies treat you nicely.
6. Don't tie up the president’ horse within rope's distance of a
sinkhole.
7. If you're considering deserting the army, be prepared to dig
your own grave and then be shot in it.
8. Only 3 of the 4 smokestacks on the Titanic were real; the last
one was decoration.
9. The best time to raid the enemy's camp is just when they're
sitting down to dinner.
10. History can be fun and interesting.
18. Thank you
Tom Caswell @tom4cam
Marion Jensen @marionjensen
Justin Ball @jbasdf
Dr. Joel Duffin @oxtralite
Rob Barton @robmba
@twhistory
Please visit us at
http://beta.twhistory.org
Editor's Notes
Single-button Follow – This functionality will allow learners to follow all of the historical figures by clicking one button, rather than follow each individual one at a time.-- We've created the concept of a 'broadcast' which makes running multiple historical re-enactments simple and let's users follow/unfollow a single account.Character Management – This functionality will allow learners to create and keep track of multiple accounts on Twitter.-- We've added character functionality including the ability to add name, bio and photo. Each character is linked to a Twitter account. Updating the character's information on the website updates their information and url on Twitter.Timed Tweets – This functionality will allow users to enter tweets for various characters, and have those tweets broadcast on a specific date and at a specific time.-- This is part of our broadcast functionality which let's users run a re-enactment via retweeting events from the figures involved.Spreadsheet Upload – Learners can populate a spreadsheet with date, time, tweets, and character, and then upload the file to our site. TwHistory would then take that information and populate the data into our Timed Tweet system-- Uploading a csv file into a re-enactment will generate all characters and tweets in the file. The re-enactment can then be scheduled for multiple broadcasts.