Twitter visualisations...

This has been an interesting few days...
On Tuesday, I visited the PGCE cohort at UWE (University of West of England) in Bristol - travelling down via the Cotswolds and Westonbirt Arboretum.

As part of the session, I spoke about Twitter as providing a range of ideas and conversations, as well as a source of rich real-life data for lessons on topics such as the Icelandic volcanic eruptions and the ensuing disruption to travel for thousands of people.
I also spoke about how it would be important for the PGCE colleagues to take this information and work to develop it into not just teaching materials, but also a curriculum...

Then I read a rather excellent blog post by Doug Belshaw which confirmed my thinking. The important point is to take some inspiration or stimulation from the content of a tweet, but then to take it further, and work with students to have a (possibly measurable, but not necessarily) impact on teaching and learning, and not just be satisfied with an interesting potential 'pedagogic adventure'. (I know I was guilty of that at times as a teacher...)

With respect to curriculum making, this was a point that was brought up by some of the students in the session.

Followed that up with a great site for visualising tweets called TWEET FLARE by Nikhil Bobb.
Each tweet flares briefly, and creates a sense of conversations emerging into the aether...
But what would you need to do to develop it as a resource in the classroom, if that was your use for it ?

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