Historical Reenactments 
with Twitter
 
Free status update service
"What's happening?" in140 characters
Almost 20 million visitors per month
19% of American Internet users use Twitter
Messages called "tweets"

Followers/Spectators: 
Experience history in bite-sized, micro-updates
Spread out authentically to match the time-line
Participants/Content Creators: 
Create content to represent a historical persona
Learn from analyzing original sources
Participaticipatory and colloborative in nature 
Cold War History course implementation: Cuban Missile Crisis
The Big Idea
Began in Spring 2009 while watching a conference broadcast
Hundreds of people in the Twitter channel, organized with a common tag
Twitter gives you the chance to "be there" virtually 
Idea: Real-time, virtual, historical reenactments using Twitter
Tom Caswell
Marion Jensen
Utah State University
caswell.tom@gmail.com 
@tom4cam
marionjensen@gmail.com
@marionjensen
Upcoming events:
Pioneer trek
Lewis and Clark 
       expedition

Future development of TwHistory.org:
Seeking funding for sustainability
A web-based repository for historical simulations
Anyone can create, post, and share their own
Allow replay of simulations with varied timelines & start times.
Battle of Gettysburg
Cuban Missile Crisis


 
What is
?
TwHistory
Twitter + History
Questions?
http://TwHistory.org
Future Plans
Photo credit: jf1234
Historical Learning Perspectives
Recent Projects
Photo credit: msun523
Photo credit: jf1234