Experiments in LIve Tweeting As a Historical Figure

Sample works
Students' tweets from US history,
Students live tweeting in gender war and peace, tweets
Students' Live tweeting, women's history,  storify
Students' Live tweeting, Ethnicity in America,  archived twitter search
Students' Live tweeting, Ethnicity in America,  storify

update coming to include documenting and sourcing final tweets in Storify rather than in paper submitted to professor thanks to Caleb McDaniel's ideas from AHA 2015.

Update to include Vine

Requirements for live tweeting, Live vining

1.     we will all tweet or vine starting the week of Nov 25 through Dec 6 ( “spread” out not all in a row on one day!)  as a “historical figure” (i.e. any Irish, German or Italian immigrant or “hyphenated” American from 1600-1950) from our class or approved by me.   You should create an account for this person with a profile.  You must use the hashtag #RsmntEH so that I can find you!  Failure to use #RsmntEH will results in no credit

2.     You will need to research and compose ten 140 character tweets or ten 6 second vines using the materials from our course and possibly outside research.   Date your tweets or Vines possible and place them in chronological order.

3.     You must submit a paper that explains the sources you used to compose each tweet or on which the Vine is based.  This must be footnoted with the sources you used. See examples below

Warning do NOT leave this assignment off to the end.  As you will see from below, the process of researching tweets is very intensive.

So surprise surprise most of my students in the online version of my women's history course have chosen to live tweet as a historical figure for their "living history" assignment.  

In need of an example to show them, I decided to tweet about the Civil War as Emily Dickinson, mostly because I love her and because the Civil War is too early for my students to select.  I created a detailed profile for her.

My students instructions are as follows

Find a minimum of three sources about your historical figure, hopefully at least one in the figure's own words (diary, letter, book, articles etc) and what that is a comprehensive biography of your figure.  You may select a moment in history or a broader event depending on the amount of source material you have for your person.  Using the source material, you will them compose fifteen tweets that are as close to 140 characters as possible.  Ultimately you are shooting for about 2100 characters which is roughly equivalent to 400 words required of the other options for this assignment  

Examples as follows.  Note I did these randomly and quickly.  You will compose all fiften, then order them chronologically.  We will all tweet the last week of class :)   Whoever gets the most followers gets extra credit? 

So from this source the first paragraph might turn into this after googling to find dates 

emily Dickinson ‏‪@GirlNWhite [add the historical date here February 1863]

@ higginson “war feels to me an oblique place” will miss Frazar Stearns so much Working on poem about him Victory comes late ‪#RsmntWH add hashtag to ID for our class.  (111) <- character="character" count="count" o:p="o:p">

this article's paragraph 3 + google search to find out  more information about Higginson’s regiment -. Army life in a black regiment

Emily Dickinson ‏‪@GirlNWhite (November 1862)

So proud of @ higginson for leading black soldiers regiment ‪#sobrave ‪#slaveryiswrong Cheers 4 the ‪#1stSCarolinaVolunteers ‪#RsmntWH (118)

This video  led me to Dickinson’s poems, which are largely undated, so no date for this tweet

Emily Dickinson ‏@GirlNWhite

It feels a shame to be Alive/When men so brave are dead;/One envies the Distinguished Dust/Permitted such a Head #rsmntWH #warsux  (139)

Information from this blog about her travel to Boston + this at the ever hepful Emily Dickinson Museum to get her cousins' names + this timeline to clarify dates of travel, where I found brief quote abt her cousins I used in tweet) 

Emily Dickinson ‏@GirlNWhite [late April 1864]
Dreading trip 2 #Boston so. I despair of every being well, but rejoice that I will be in the sweet care of @ FannyN & dear @ Loo #RsmntWH