The Instructional Development Center (IDC) is a division of Teaching & Learning Technologies (ITaP)
Upcoming Training
(click the session name to see a description and register)
Available now through Monday, 3/30 (self-paced, online) |
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| Tues., 3/17, 9am - 4pm (spring break) | |
| Weds., 3/18, 9am - 4pm (spring break) |
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| Thurs., 3/26, 9am - 11am | |
| Weds., 4/1, 1pm - 4pm | |
| Mon., 4/6, 2:30pm - 4pm | |
| Thurs., 4/16, 3pm - 4:30pm |
This Month's Links
7 things you should know about...Twitter (Educause)
The top 7 mistakes new Twitter users make
Twitter? It's What You Make It (The New York Times)
How to Twitter (Wall Street Journal)
Twitter as a Learning Tool. Really.
Twitter Tweets for Higher Education
Good Educational Sources on Twitter
How to Subscribe to a BoilerCast
Putting a Twitter Feed in your Blackboard Class As with RSS feeds in our last issue of this newsletter, anywhere you can put HTML in your Blackboard class, you can embed code to create a Twitter feed. Note: you will need to create a Twitter account before you can do this. Generate your Twitter Code Use Twitter's widget site and follow the online instructions to generate the code you need. As you go through the widget wizard, you'll make a number of choices as to how the widget will look. Some widgets can look very stripped-down and basic, and others look rather fancy. Experiment, and select one that will suit your preference and the location where you will put it in your Blackboard class. Once you've generated the code, follow the instructions to copy it to your PC's clipboard by selecting it all and pressing CTRL-C (or Apple-C for Mac users). Adding a Twitter Feed to a Blackboard Header or Footer
If you have text that you want to appear above or below the feed in your header or footer, you can enter it above the Twitter feed code at any time.
More with Twitter feeds in Blackboard Embedding your Twitter feeds in a header or footer is perhaps the most common application, but how you use Twitter feeds in your online class is limited only by your instructional objectives - and your imagination. As with RSS feeds, you can embed Twitter feeds in many Blackboard tools that use HTML. The list includes:
Contact tlt-consulting@purdue.edu for more information and help. Final Blackboard Users' Group Meeting for Spring 2009 This semester's Blackboard Users' Group (BUG) final Spring 2009 meeting will be in April. Attend BUG meetings to learn the latest on Blackboard, learn some new and interesting tips on using instructional tools, and talk to other Blackboard users on campus. An agenda will be posted beforehand on the BUG wiki, and light refreshments will be served at the meeting. Contact tlt-consulting@purdue.edu if you have any comments or questions, or wish to suggest items for the agenda. Please mark your calendars; we hope you can attend! Tuesday, April 14, 2009 |
Blackboard Corner
What the Tweet is Twitter?
Living life 140 characters at a time
First developed in 1996, the one-trick-pony microblogging tool known as 
Twitter has become the third largest social network (after MySpace and Facebook), with an estimated 6 million users.
How Twitter Works
Once you create an account on Twitter, you can 'follow' friends with Twitter accounts, and they can also 'follow' you, if they choose to. Once you follow someone, you receive on your Twitter home page any 140-character or less updates -- called "tweets" -- that they publish to Twitter. These published tweets create a timeline that you can view, reply to, or re-publish (called "retweeting") to all of the people who follow you.
Twitter in Plain English by CommonCraft |
Because you can tweet from your cell phone or PDA, you can post to Twitter and follow the tweets of those you follow from wherever you are, whenever you want to.
Twitter's Popularity
Twitter's use and notoriety are spreading like wildfire; you only need watch a cable news show for half an hour to hear references to the network's Twitterings, the show's anchor's Twitter page, and the Twitter pages established for noteworthy events. Your favorite stars, political pundits, non-profit organizations, corporations: multitudes have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon.
Twitter's search function often makes it many people's first resource in finding breaking news. People on the scene of a breaking news story often tweet what is happening instantaneously  from their cell phones; the recent landing of a passenger jet into the Hudson was first reported by someone who uploaded a photo through the Twitter-related application Twitpic. |
Why People Like Twitter
What people get out of twittering varies. Many like it because it keeps them up to date and brings them closer to people: their friends, coworkers, and others they are interested in. It is also an effective tool for self-promotion, which explains why politicians and corporations are among the biggest users. Many people use it to keep tabs on favorite public personalities, or to keep informed about the work of twittering colleagues, or to share what they themselves learn or do at work. Others use Twitter to send out queries: to get quick answers to questions, to informally poll, or to find information resources.
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The question posed to other social networking applications can also be asked of Twitter: is Twitter just another time-wasting social networking tool, or does it have applications in education?
Those who promote the value of participatory learning cite the utility of Twitter in providing reinforcement of learning in the classroom by connecting class material to the real world and by continuing engagement in class material outside of class. Educators also argue that Twitter can help with the creation of community in the class, as students and instructors get to know each other through their daily tweets.
Examples of instructional applications that enterprising educators have found:
- Observation and analysis of twitter reaction to real-world events, such as the January 2009 inauguration, political upheavals, and natural disasters
- Have students follow a professional, such as a journalist, to get a real-time view of their work and life
- Exercises in Twitter to teach grammar or provide opportunities to practice analysis, synthesis, and conciseness of expression.
See This Month's Links for resources that provide more ideas.
Local Twitter Action
Who's talking on the Purdue Twitter backchannel?
Search twitter.com for "Purdue" and you find hundreds of tweets, and many local tweeters. Some are just individual faculty, staff or students, while others are organizations using Twitter to send out news and information.
Following are a few of the more interesting local Tweeters:
The Instructional Development Center (IDC) has also begun a Twitter page. IDC invites anyone with a Twitter account interested in IDC and TLT (Teaching & Learning Technologies) news to follow @TLT_Updates. To see recent tweets from @TLT_Updates, scroll in the widget above; to follow, click the Follow button in the widget.
Note: This Twitter widget can be embedded to display your tweets on any Web page. Click the Get Widget above to create your own Web page widget, and for the steps to add the widget to your Blackboard class, see Blackboard Corner.
5 Types of Twitter Applications The popularity of Twitter has given rise to the development of thousands of Twitter-related applications. These are a few of the most popular types, with examples. (An attempt is made here to categorize these apps, but some span more than one category.) |
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1. Mobile clients. These allow you to send and receive tweets on your mobile device. A few of the most popular include Twitterific, Twitterberry, Pocketwit, and TwitterFon. |
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2. Desktop clients. Your Twitter web page has some limitations on functionality which can be compensated for by features created in third-party applications, such as Tweetdeck, Twhirl, Digsby, and AlertThingy. |
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3. Popular Web applications. So many, one hardly knows where to begin. TwitPic allows you to upload photos easily to Twitter from your phone or computer. Twitturly tracks the most popular URLs being shared through Twitter. Tweetwhatyouspend allows you to track your spending through Twitter. FuelFrog allows you to keep a log of your fuel and mileage. |
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4. Search engines. These are applications that work with Twitter's search capabilities: Twubble recommends new people to follow based upon your followers and who they are following. Twitterverse visually depicts the current Twitter timeline. TwitterLocal finds Tweeters in locales that you specify. |
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5. Web extensions for other applications and sites. A huge variety of applications (including some listed above in the mobile and desktop clients) allow you to link between, or aggregate, information from your Twitter page (and those you follow) and your 'blog, other networking sites or applications, or your web page. These include: TwitterFox, a Firefox extension; TwitterBox, a Twitter client for Second Life; and feedalizr, which allows you to tweet, upload pictures to Flickr, update your FaceBook status, and keep up to date with friends' posts to these and other sites. If you already use Outlook, you may want to display your tweets using OutTwit. |
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Hosted Survey Going Away
Users: service will be unplugged May 9, 2009
Any Purdue University users of Hosted Survey should make arrangements to download their data and recreate their surveys in Qualtrics Survey, Purdue's officially-supported survey tool, as soon as possible. On the last day of the semester, May 9, 2009 at 5pm, Hosted Survey will be 'turned off' for Purdue users, and they will no longer be able to access surveys or data created in Hosted Survey.
Surveys cannot be migrated from Hosted Survey to Qualtrics Survey. You must download any data that you need to save from Hosted Survey and rebuild your surveys in Qualtrics.
- To create a Qualtrics account, go to: https://www.itap.purdue.edu/tlt/qualtrics/
- For instructions on downloading your data from Hosted Survey, go to: https://www.itap.purdue.edu/tlt/HostedSurvey/Hosted_Survey_download_data.pdf
- For assistance, contact: tlt-hostedsurvey@purdue.edu
 TLT Toolbox: |
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Podcasting is a syndicated service for broadcasting of audio or video files from the Web. It has become a popular service in higher education through which faculty make available audio or video files of their lectures and other instructional materials. The files are accessed through a podcasting mechanism that acts as a special type of RSS feed. The files are syndicated, and students can subscribe to the podcasting service feed for their classes so that the audio, video, and other files (images or PDF files) are automatically downloaded to their computers or portable devices, such as iPods, to listen to or view at their convenience.
Purdue's podcasting service, called BoilerCast, is powered by iTunes and is available to al
l credit courses on the West Lafayette Campus. If they wish, instructors can schedule automatic recordings at the beginning of a semester if they teach in one of the BoilerCast-capable classrooms or conference rooms on campus. These are automatically created and uploaded to the Purdue iTunes University Web site. Instructors teaching in other classrooms will need to provide a microphone and recording software to create their podcasts, and will manage the upload of their own content.
Although podcasts can be downloaded to any desktop computer, many students like podcasting because it allows them to subscribe once and access the files on the portable media players they already use. They can listen to or view missed lectures or review material at their convenience before exams - all without having to be sitting at a computer. The ability to replay lectures or other instructional material can be of special assistance to auditory learners, non-native speakers, and those with learning disabilities.
For more information, contact IDC at tlt-consulting@purdue.edu