Moodle Mondays – Embedding a Twitter feed in a Moodle Course

by Phil Vincent · March 21, 2016

What is it?

A Twitter feed is a collection of tweets from a Twitter User/account. Many YSJ staff use Twitter as an additional communication/engagement tool for their module or programme. For more information about Twitter, visit our 10 Days of Twitter resource which is designed to get you up and running.

How does it work?

If you are using Twitter for Teaching, Learning or Assessment, then you may want to embed a Twitter Widget into your Moodle course, so that students who aren’t using Twitter can see what is happening.

Embedding Twitter into your Moodle course involves two steps:

Create the Twitter widget
Paste the code for your widget into Moodle

This short screencast will talk you through the process, and you can find a PDF version of the instructions below:

[gview file=”http://blog.yorksj.ac.uk/moodle/files/2014/02/Embed-Twitter-Widget-into-Moodle.pdf”]

Twitter and the 3E Framework

Below are some examples of how Twitter can be used in conjunction with the 3E element of the TEL Quality Framework:

Enhance

Adopting technology in simple and effective ways to actively
support students and increase their activity and
self-responsibility.

Extend

Further use of technology that facilitates key aspects of students’
individual and collaborative learning and assessment through
increasing their choice and control.

Empower

Developed use of technology that requires higher order individual
and collaborative learning that reflect how knowledge is created
and used in professional environments.

Tweet links to articles, reading lists, presentations, lecture recordings, people to follow, and other materials.

Provide hashtag to facilitate ongoing module backchannel (#MOD101), arrange ‘Talk to an Expert’ Twitter sessions, encourage reflections, research & formative evaluation, and share own learning.

Encourage students to share own learning. Allow students to plan, create, and facilitate a scheduled Twitter chat, or ‘Journal Club’ (where staff & students meet online in Twitter to discuss a journal article they all read beforehand!).

What kind of Twitter Widget would you embed into your Moodle course? Timeline? Favourites? List? Search?

Phil