Ideas for using Twitter in higher education are easy to find (here and here). One simple way is to embed a Twitter widget into your Moodle course. Embedding Twitter into Moodle is an easy way to add current, course-relevant news and opinions to your course. Twitter is full of companies, news organizations, non-profits, professional associations, activists, politicians, celebrities and more – nearly every discipline can find something of value on Twitter. It’s easy, and you don’t even need a Twitter account (though you’ll have more options if you do). This post includes ideas for using Twitter in Moodle and step-by-step instructions for adding a Twitter widget to your Moodle course.
Ideas for use
IDEA 1: Follow professional organizations and news sources relevant to your course to start classroom discussions
IDEA 2: Follow known professionals in the field and help students develop their professional social media network
- Find scholars, CEOs, writers, activists, and more. Go to www.wefollow.com and search for the discipline you want to find people. For example, for a list of people who post about “writing”, search for writing.
IDEA 3: Find brands or marketing firms for examples of social media marketing and customer service
IDEA 4: Find international organizations or native speakers who post in their native language
IDEA 5: Encourage students to write about course-relevant experiences they have outside of the classroom and label those tweets with a course-specific hashtag. Or, encourage students to retweet news they have found on Twitter and share it with the whole the class.
Twitter account
If you do not have a Twitter account, you will only be able to add one person, company, or search term to your course widget. If you have a Twitter account, you can add many more by creating lists with many people and companies. Read more information on how to create a list in Twitter and why you would want to.
How do I find people/companies to follow?
Websites like WeFollow.com can help find interesting accounts on Twitter. It works best to search by a topic, like chemistry or economics, rather than with a specific person or organization name. If you are looking for a specific person/organization, it is easiest to search at twitter.com/search.
How to embed Twitter into Moodle
Embedding Twitter into your Moodle course involves two steps:
- Creating a Twitter widget
- Pasting the code for your widget into Moodle
An example of a Twitter widget in Moodle
Create the Twitter widget
Step 1: To start creating a widget, click here.
Step 2: In the left-side menu, click on “My Website.”
Step 3: Chose what type of widget you want to use. If you do not have a Twitter account, select “Search Widget.” If you do have a Twitter account, you can create a widget with your Twitter posts, or a list of Twitter users or favorite tweets (faves). For this tutorial, we’re going to create a Search widget.
Step 4: In the “Search Query” box, enter either a Twitter username or a search term.
- Example: Twitter posts of Ad Age type – “from:adage” (without the quotes)
- Example: Twitter posts about health care, type – “health care” (without the quotes)
- Warning: if you use a search term, you have no control over what will appear. If someone posts to Twitter using your search term and profanity, it will appear in your Moodle course.
Step 5: In the “Title” box, give the widget a title, and give it a caption in the “Caption” box. You should see a preview of your widget on the left-side of the screen. You can customize the “Preferences,” “Appearance,” and “Dimensions” if needed.
Step 6: Once you are ready, click “Finish & Grab Code.” Right-click inside the text box and chose “Copy.” Don’t be intimidated – this is HTML code that you will now paste into your Moodle course.
In Moodle
Step 7: Go to your Moodle page and go to the course to which you want to add the Twitter widget. Click on “Turn editing on” in the upper-right corner of the screen.
Step 8: In the right-side column of the screen, look for a heading called “Blocks.” In the drop-down menu, chose “HTML.”
Step 9: That should have added a new block the course page. By default, the new block is called “(new HTML block).” Click on the “Update” icon.
Step 10: In the next screen, click on the “Toggle HTML Source” icon.
Step 11: Within the text box, right-click and chose “Paste.”
Step 12: Click on “Save changes.” That’s it! Your Twitter widget should now appear in the left-side navigation of your Moodle course. If you prefer to have the widget near the top, you can move it anywhere in the sides of the screen (the block areas). To move it, click and drag the dark grey rectangle directly above the widget and move it to the location you prefer.
Note: If you need to make any changes to your widget, you’ll need to create a new widget and go through these steps again.
To delete the widget, click on the “Delete” icon right above the widget.
If you are interested in other ideas for using Twitter for teaching and learning, contact Teaching and Learning Technologies. If you are new to Twitter, check out our guide to Getting started with Twitter.
Do you have other ideas for using Twitter in Moodle? Let us know about it in the comments.
Canary Wharf news ticker image by Wikimedia Commons user Senseiich / Creative Commons licensed BY-SA 3.0
About the author
Dan Reis is an Instructional Technologist with Elon University’s Teaching and Learning Technologies.
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