Tweet the Debates: Using Twitter to recreate history

Twitter is a pretty amazing tool. Think about it. With Twitter, I can get constant updates from my friends, family, and colleagues on what they had for breakfast, how their drive to work went, and truly important stuff like how hot they think it will be this afternoon.

Seriously. How did we live without Twitter?

I kid because I love.

Twitter really is a pretty amazing tool. Revolutions in Egypt. Live updates on natural disasters. Connections with loved ones thousands of miles away. Not to mention a decent instructional strategy.

We’ve talked about using Twitter in the social studies before. And so when I came across Tweet the Debates, I was more than just a little curious. Created by artist and lawyer Toby Grytafey, Tweet the Debates is his attempt to recreate the summer of 1787 as if those attending the Constitutional Convention had access to social media.

It’s an interesting concept that has worked for other historical events. And it sounds pretty cool. Toby started a Kickstarter project that was hoping to raise funds for a mobile app and other goodies. Even if the fundraising idea fell through, the actual Tweet the Debates idea is awesome.

Toby uses a quote from James Madison, apparently written in the spring of 1835, as inspiration for the project:

Blatant self promotion and re-tweeting history

I had the chance yesterday to sit and chat with some incredibly interesting folks. There were five of us:

• Alwyn Colliinson – creator of the @RealTimeWWII Twitter feed
• Marion Jensen – runs the TwHistory website
• Michael Hobbs – historian and creator of the Cuban Missile Crisis Twitter feed
• Zach Hughes – tech blogger

We were asked by the Huffington Post to share our thinking about the practice of “re-tweeting” history.

So we did.

5 Days of Helpful Tools: Day 4 – 440 Ways to Use Social Media

It’s Day Four. The question is easy to ask – with so many tools out there, what would best to share? No easy answer but today we’re going with social media tools.

I’m convinced that when used appropriately these sorts of tools can help improve teaching and learning. But a lot of us shy away from using them in education because we’re not sure what that use looks like. So here ya go. Lots of ideas on using social media in the classroom.

• 35 Interesting Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom
• 100 Ways To Use Twitter In Education, By Degree Of Difficulty
• How To Use Twitter For Teaching And Learning
• 16 Ways Educators Can Use Pinterest
• 37 Ways Teachers Should Use Pinterest
• 100 Ways to Use Facebook in Your Classroom
• 100 More Ways You Should Be Using Facebook in Your Classroom
• 52 Secrets Students Should Know About Google Docs

So go just a little bit crazy. Pick just one of these 440 ways and give it a try.

(I’m sure there’s more than 440. What have we missed?)

10 best hashtags for social studies teachers

Twitter. It’s a good thing.

And I know many of you are already big social media fans. But for those who are still just a bit unsure about the whole Twitter / Facebook / Plurk thing, this is for you.

Two pieces of advice:

1. Start small. Use Twitter just for yourself. Don’t use it as part of your instruction yet – focus on using it to grow your Personal Learning Network. Follow and read other teachers and organizations Gather info. Ask questions.

Start here to find helpful users to follow.

2. Use hashtags. Hashtags are a way for you to follow a theme or topic rather than a person or organization. This allows you to cast a much wider net while also helping you find more people to add your Follow list.

The problem?

You can’t follow a hashtag directly through your Twitter account.

This is perhaps the most confusing point for people who are new to hashtags — but it’s important to understand. From your Twitter account you can only “follow” other Twitter users (accounts set up for an individual, organization, project, event, etc.). A hashtag is not a Twitter account that you can click a “follow” button for.

It’s a way to label or tag tweets so they can be easily pulled together. A hashtag is always a word preceded by the pound sign like “#sschat” which users insert into their tweets like this:

Since a hashtag is nothing more than a character string inserted into a tweet, it’s something that you can search Twitter for. So the most basic way to track hashtags through your web browser is:

1. Go to Twitter Search.
2. Search for a hashtag you want to track. Include the “#” in your search query. Here’s a search for #historyteacher
3. Keep that page open in a browser tab, and refresh it periodically to see the latest results. Or subscribe to the feed for your search in your feed reader and check there occasionally for updates.

But what hashtags should you follow? Here are 10 great tags that are a great place to start.

#sschat – Social Studies chat (One of my favorites. Check out their Ning page too.)
#socialstudies – General social studies
#history – General history stuff
#apush – Advanced Placement history
#ushistory – United States history
#civics – Government and civics teaching
#apgov – Advanced Placement government
#historychat – History chats
#historyteacher – History instruction
#geographyteacher – Geography instruction

Which tags am I missing?

#SOTU, document analysis, historical thinking skills and other nerdy social studies stuff

You’ve heard it before and you’ll hear it again. I’m a history geek. And a political science geek and well . . . you get the idea.

So it’s a given that I love a good political speech, especially during presidential primary election season. And the State of the Union address? Of course.

Had it on the big screen, laptop and iPad at the ready for real-time updates and social media commentary. The problem? My mind kept drifting off thinking about ways to integrate President Obama’s speech into a social studies classroom. And not even the speech so much but ways that all of the digital media content and historical thinking skills could be included as part of the learning.

So here goes, a few things you might try over the next few days:

1. Use the online Enhanced Broadcast (with embedded graphics, links and images) to help kids get a better grasp of what President Obama was talking about. This seems like a no-brainer – we know using visuals help the brain grasp big ideas. The site also has links to a transcript so that you can pick and choose what bits to show. I would not show the whole thing – pick a topic like immigration or energy to focus on. An interesting conversation could develop about the use of visuals as a way to influence opinion. Which would have more influence – a simple transcript, a video of the speech or the enhanced broadcast?

2. Scroll down the Enhanced Broadcast site to see ways that you and your kids can use social media to participate in the on-going conversation. This includes the White House Twitter and Facebook feeds. But have your kids do their own research using the Twitter search feature. Use hashtags like #sotu and #stateoftheunion. Have students compare the different responses and thing about reasons why there are differences.

3. Using either the Library of Congress and National Archives document analysis worksheets, have students break down both the speech and the social media response to the speech.

4. Have kids fact check both the SOTU and the Republican response. Discuss sources for this information – where can we find the facts? Are there citations available from the White House and the Republican party? If they get stuck finding things, head to the cool New York Times page with transcript, video and fact checks side by side. FactCheck and PolitiFact are also good for that sort of thing. Have them compare two different news sites to see how the fact checking might be different – CNN and Fox News, for instance.

5. Use Wordle.net to help kids visualize themes in both the SOTU and the Republican response.

SOTU 2012

Republican response

Just a few thoughts. How would you use the SOTU?