Feedback Advertise Get the Magazine About

INNOVATIVE TEACHING CAREER READY THE PATH TO COLLEGE FEA STUDENTS GO REGULARS CLASS GUIDES
THURSDAY, MAY 8, 2014
Search ...
Innov8: Twitter + History = TwHistory | Innovative Teaching ... http://www.futureeducators.org/goteach/2012/01/05/innov8-tw...
1 de 4 08/05/14 10:42 a.m.
Go Teach in the
classroom
Find tips on using this
article in your classroom in
our new guide. Download
the PDF.
Innovative Teaching
Innov8: Twitter + History = TwHistory
Marion Jensen is the founder of the TwHistory project and a senior instructional designer at
American Express who has a masters degree in instructional technology. He is a technology
tinkerer, and he is constantly looking for new ways to use social media in learning situations.
GO: What is TwHistory?
Marion: TwHistory answers the question, What would have happened if people had Twitter 100
or 1,000 years ago? Twitter is the microblogging site that allows you to post short updates that
answer the question What are you doing right now? TwHistory allows you to set up a virtual
historical reenactment. Instead of dressing up in costumes and recreating historical events, you
can do it virtually. An example of a TwHistory reenactment might be the sinking of the Titanic or
the Battle of Gettysburg. To my knowledge, theres really not a way to study or experience
history in real time, and TwHistory allows you to do that.
GO: How do teachers set up the reenactment?
Marion: Its pretty easy to do. First, a teacher decides on
an event, such as the Continental Congress or the sinking
of the Titanic. Either the teacher or the students will need
to do a little bit of historical research to find out who some
of the historical figures were. Hopefully, weve got some
people who kept journals, or there is some type of written
documentation about the event. Students go through those
journals or historical documents, and they create tweets
based on those events. You put your characters, all of the
tweets, and all of the times that the tweets would have gone out into a spreadsheet and you
upload it to our site at www.twhistory.org. You connect it with Twitter accounts, and the site will
queue up those tweets and start to send it out.
GO: Can anybody set up a reenactment, or does it need to be a teacher?
Marion: Anybody can do it.
GO: Have you had any recent historical events recreated in TwHistory?
Marion: The most recent events that weve had are the Cuban Missile Crisis and some around
the Civil Rights Movement and the Freedom Rides about the middle of the 20th century. But
certainly you could do anything up to even the present day. The best way to do it is to have a
good documented source. With the Cuban Missile Crisis, we have all of the recordings as
President Kennedy met with his advisors, so that really makes for some good material to be
able to tweet these reenactments.
GO: How does virtually reenacting an event help the students learn about it?
Marion: A lot of times, the way we learn history is by reading somebodys interpretation of it.
Were reading from a history book or maybe were watching a movie. Historians have gone
through original source documentation, and theyve pulled out what they feel are the most
important parts. Thats a great way to learn history; Im not knocking that. But this provides an
interesting way to learn, because the students are diving right into the historical documents
themselves. For example, I was following the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was done by a group
of high school students. They each played a character: John F. Kennedy, Khrushchev, some of
the advisors. One of them was The New York Times, who was tweeting things from the
headlines. As the Cuban Missile Crisis was exploding, The New York Times was tweeting
baseball scores. I thought, whats this guy doing? Hes not doing the most important headlines.
Then it hit me. This hadnt leaked out to the press yet, so he was doing exactly what was in the
newspapers. That was an insight to me as I followed it, but probably also to the students as they
realized this thing went on for three or four days before the press ever got wind of it. Then we
saw a tweet from President Kennedy that said we have some reporters asking questions. Weve
got to decide how to present this to the press. Then, the next thing we know its all over the
Facebook Twitter
LinkedIn Delicious
Added: January 5th, 2012
Category: Innovative Teaching
Share This
You Might Also Like
National Teacher
of the Year: Jeff
Charbonneau
Learn about the
engineering design
process, and see
how National
Teacher of the Year Jeff
Charbonneau uses it in the [Read
More]
Cultivating Global
Leaders
Students in a
Seattle high school
are making a
difference with
World Water
Week. See how they became
leaders. [Read More]
How Comics Made
Me Love Reading
When I became
the co-CEO of
Archie Comics five
years ago, I had
never read a
comic book. I was an elementary
school art [Read More]
Past Issues
March/April 2014
January/February 2014
November/December 2013
August/September 2013
March/April 2013
January/February 2013
November/December 2012
August/September 2012
March/April 2012
January/February 2012
October/November 2011
August/September 2011
Topics
Innovative Teaching
Career Ready
The Path to College
Get Into College
Life 101
College Resources by State
FEA Students
FEAtured
My FEA Moment
FEA National Student
Officers
GO Regulars
Save the Date
Listen Up
FEA Advisor Snapshot
Notes From The Director
Class Guides
Recent Articles
Ohio FEA Chapter Presents
Sessions at International FEA
Conference
Notes From the Director: Youll be
in charge a lot sooner than you
think
FEAtured: FEA Member
Save the Date: March/April 2014
National Teacher of the Year: Jeff
Charbonneau
Tags
career college
community service FEA
national student officers
financial aid innovation
inspiration
leadership learning
scholarships STEM
teaching technology
Innov8: Twitter + History = TwHistory | Innovative Teaching ... http://www.futureeducators.org/goteach/2012/01/05/innov8-tw...
2 de 4 08/05/14 10:42 a.m.
As the Cuban Missile Crisis
was exploding, The New
York Times was tweeting
baseball scores. Then it
hit me. This hadnt leaked
out to the press yet
headlines in The New York Times. That allowed students a deeper insight that came from
searching through the historical documents.
GO: How did you get the idea for TwHistory?
Marion: I started using Twitter and was pretty much
unimpressed with it. I thought it was just a way for
people to follow celebrities, and I didnt really see the
value of it. Then I learned about hashtags. Lets say Im
attending a conference, and everybody who is attending
the conference will post tweets to a particular hashtag. A
hashtag is just a number sign, so if I was attending the
WCA Conference, I would type my tweet and then put #WCA2011. The first time I followed one
of these hashtags, it was almost like I was at the conference, because people would be tweeting
about the keynote speaker, and I was hearing all of these voices. I thought, its almost like Im at
the conference, but not quite. My next thought was what would happen if we recreated a
historical event? Youd almost get the sense that this thing was happening somewhere in real
time. Usually when we learn about history, its outside of real time. I might study the Battle of
Gettysburg, which happened in three days, but maybe I watch a movie and its over in three
hours. Maybe I take a semester-long course, and it takes me 15 weeks to get through the
material. When a battle starts in TwHistory, it happens in real time, and I dont get to find out
exactly what happened until the battle is done. Is everybody safe? Is everybody okay? You dont
know for two or three hours until they start tweeting again. TwHistory provides a unique way to
experience history.
GO: What are some of the most popular reenactments?
Marion: I think the most popular is probably the Titanic because its so easy to show what the
idea behind TwHistory is.We have one pioneer trek that lasts for four months. Its a lot of fun,
but its kind of hard to explain and say, follow this for four months and then youll understand
what TwHistory is. When people ask me about TwHistory, I say, would you like me to sink the
Titanic for you? From beginning to end, it happens in about six or seven hours. Its easy to run
that one and let people follow it and see how TwHistory works.
GO: What problems do people encounter when they set up a reenactment?
Marion: The biggest problem is finding the documents. If youve got a good set of documents to
start from then its really easy to do, but sometimes it can be a challenge to find several detailed
documented sources from several people about a significant historical event. Theres a lot of
really interesting things out there that happened, but tracking down some of those documents
can be tricky. One of the things that were working on and that we received a grant from the
Utah Education Network for is to put together some lesson plans and find some of these
documents so that we can give teachers a packet and say, heres some good documents, heres
the event, heres how you can make the assignments.
Google Books is another tool that folks have been using. There are a lot of really good public
domain books that are out there, journals of people who were in the Civil War, things like that,
that people can find. Theyre just these dusty records that nobody uses because theyre boring
historical documents, but if you take them and assign a student to create some tweets for a two
week long TwHistory event of daily life in 1820, it can be exciting to get to know those
characters.
GO: What have teachers told you that they have found most valuable about TwHistory?
Marion: I think it drives the students to the documents, but theyre also starting to think like
historians might think. They read a paragraph, and they have to ask themselves, is this a critical
piece of information, is this something that adds to the story or adds to the event? Sometimes
weather might be an important part of the story. Sometimes it might not be. Instead of just being
told this is history, this is all the important stuff, theyre starting to ask those questions in their
mind. They also learn to analyze and condense information. Theyve got to try and stay as true
to the character as they can while coming up with a 140-character tweet based on a
500-character paragraph. It gets them thinking about whats the most important part of the
historical event.
GO: What about the students? Have you gotten any feedback from them?
Marion: Yes, the students have really enjoyed it. One of the happy side benefits of this is you
really get to know the historical characters. The Battle of Gettysburg was important and was a
turning point in the Civil War. There is so much written about that, but what about the people
who were in it? Theres a group of letters that were written by someone who was at the Battle of
Gettysburg. He was a young guy, he was about 22, and he had a young wife and a baby at
home. He wrote these letters home and they said, I wish I was home, I cant wait to see you
again, kiss the baby for me, I miss you so much. He explained what they were doing during the
day. He was shot and killed on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg. All of the other
characters who had kept journals had survived. We knew about the war because they were
writing their recollections. There were a lot of people who were shocked and saddened that this
person had died. He was just a private. He wasnt a big character, but they had come to know
this person who had his whole life before him and had seen him shot and killed, and it was
shocking. During the Freedom Rides Civil Rights Movement, we had some students who were
assigned somebody who had gone on one of these Freedom Rides. They got to know this
person through the documents and found out that he was alive. They contacted him and did an
interview with him and were able to include some of that in the reenactment. So for them, it was
no longer just an event. These are characters who really lived. They had hopes and dreams and
passions, and they really come to life as the students dive in and get to know them.
Innov8: Twitter + History = TwHistory | Innovative Teaching ... http://www.futureeducators.org/goteach/2012/01/05/innov8-tw...
3 de 4 08/05/14 10:42 a.m.
Explore TwHistory.
Related Tags: innovation , learning , teaching , technology
Previous Topic: FEAtured: Shavonda
Johnson
Next Topic: My FEA Moment
Privacy & Terms
GO: Why do you think its important to incorporate social media into education?
Marion: I really believe that learning is a social event.
Some people learn very well by reading a book. Other
people need to be more hands-on or need to discuss it
with somebody. I think a lot of times, we learn things to a
greater degree when we talk with other people. The ability to talk to other students in the class
is very beneficial. The ability to talk to a teacher is very beneficial, but now social media lets us
interact with folks around the globe, with people who are interested in a particular topic, with
people who are experts in a particular topic. Its like the difference between having a pretzel
versus having a buffet. Theres just so much stuff out there that we have access to when we
incorporate social media into education. Its a clich, but it opens up a brand new world, and you
can just dive so much deeper into all of the rich content thats out there.
Leave a Comment
Name (required)
Mail (will not be published) (required)
Website
Submit Comment
Log in
Type the text
Copyright 2014 Future Educators Association

All rights reserved.

Go Teach (Online) ISSN 2163-8225
Future Educators Association
PO Box 7888
Bloomington, IN 47407
p: 800-766-1156
goteach@futureeducators.org
Innov8: Twitter + History = TwHistory | Innovative Teaching ... http://www.futureeducators.org/goteach/2012/01/05/innov8-tw...
4 de 4 08/05/14 10:42 a.m.