Skip to content

Menu

Copyright Teaching and Learning Blog 2023 | Theme by ThemeinProgress | Proudly powered by WordPress

Teaching and Learning BlogIncorporating the E-learning Blog

Twitterfountain: a cautionary tale

July 24, 2012TechWatch, Web 2.0 Standard

The expert Twitterati amongst you may have come across the Twitterfountain service, which enabled you to create an animated stream of tweets featuring a specific hashtag, against a backdrop of images found with a particular tag on Flickr, with the tweets updated in realtime. This was great for conference sessions, or even for teaching, as a way of encouraging interaction from your audience. It only took a few minutes to learn how to use the website, and a few minutes more to create your animation.

I was in a session with a couple of colleagues yesterday and thought I’d mention Twitterfountain in the context of a discussion around ways of encouraging engagement in lectures to large groups. It occurred to me that it would be easier to display it on the projector rather than attempting to explain it, so I typed in the URL – resulting in a 404 ‘Page not found’ error.

Eventually, a bit of Google searching brought up a company blog with the heading: “Twitterfountain has gone belly up”.

A real shame, as it did what it did very well. Of course, there are alternatives out there, but that’s not the point I want to make.

What the story shows is that if you’re using one of the dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of free Web 2.0 services out there to support your teaching (or research, or conference presentations, or whatever), you should be cautious – from one day to the next you can find that the site has disappeared, taking all your content with it if you didn’t have it backed up on your own computer.

PS – of the alternatives I’ve looked at, Twitterfontana seems to come closest to offering the same combination of functionality and ease of use.

Categories

  • Academic misconduct
  • Academic skills
  • Accessibility
  • Adobe Connect
  • AR
  • Assessment
  • Assessment and feedback
  • Audio
  • Blackboard Collaborate
  • Blended learning
  • BoB Box of Broadcasts
  • Camtasia
  • Case Studies
  • Co-Tutor
  • Collaboration
  • Comment piece
  • Communications
  • Conferences
  • Copyright
  • CPD
  • Current Projects
  • Digital literacy
  • Distance learning
  • E-portfolios
  • Electronic Voting
  • Elluminate
  • Employability
  • Engagement
  • Evaluation
  • Events
  • Excellence in Teaching and Learning
  • Facebook
  • Feedback
  • Fieldwork
  • Flipped classroom
  • Funding
  • Futurelearn
  • Gamification
  • General
  • Groupwork
  • HE trends
  • HEA
  • Images
  • Informal learning
  • Innovation
  • iPads
  • JISC
  • Learn
  • Lecture capture
  • LectureTools
  • Lecturing to large groups
  • Make History timelines
  • Microsoft Teams
  • Minimum Presence
  • Mobile devices
  • Module and curriculum design
  • MOOCs
  • Moodle
  • New lecturers
  • NSS
  • OER
  • OMR
  • Online marking
  • Online submission
  • PDP
  • Pedagogic
  • Pedagogic research
  • Pedagogy
  • Peer Support
  • Personal tutoring
  • Plagiarism
  • Podcasting
  • Programme Reps
  • QR codes
  • Quiz
  • Reports
  • Research into e-learning
  • Researchers
  • ReVIEW (Echo 360)
  • RiTA
  • RITAs
  • Screen recording
  • Second Life
  • Smartpens
  • Social media
  • Staff Development
  • Standards
  • Strategy
  • Student-led curriculum
  • Support for students
  • Tablets
  • Teaching Awards
  • Teaching excellence
  • Teaching Innovation Awards
  • Teaching methods
  • Teaching room technologies
  • Teaching rooms
  • TechWatch
  • Tools
  • Turnitin
  • Twitter
  • Uncategorized
  • Vacancies
  • Vevox
  • Vice Chancellor's Award
  • Video
  • Web 2.0
  • Web Conferencing
  • WebPA
  • widening participation