M02c - Embed Twitter Feeds

Keywords: Twitter, embed, HTML, dynamic content, RSS, rich site summary, context

What is it?

If you are a Twitter user and want to embed your Twitter 'feed' into your Moodle site, Twitter itself provides a useful 'widget' (mini-application), together with embed code that you can add into a Moodle block or within other activities and resources. RSS feeds can be added via the Moodle RSS block.

Why use it?

Twitter is now widely used by educators to provide live discussions and to distribute links. Twitter can also be used to help students contextualise their learning, by better understanding how it applies in the 'real world'.

Who can use it?

Staff can add Twitter feeds to their Moodle courses.

Before I start...

You will need a Twitter account set up.

Meeting the baseline

The UCL E-Learning Baseline suggests the following for Resources :

5.1 Use descriptive titles for all items and consider displaying the item's description on the course homepage, as this helps students understand the purpose of the activity or resource.
5.7 Include dynamic content from the wider web, so students can better contextualise their learning and relate it to world events (if appropriate to the course), e.g. Twitter feeds, and RSS news feeds.

How do I set one up?

Twitter Feeds

1. Go to https://publish.twitter.com/.

2. Enter the Name of the Twitter profile you would like to embed and select Embed Timeline.

3. You can also configure the appearance (you can select colours that match your Moodle set up) and dimensions (you can leave the default if you prefer).
You can see what it will look like in the Preview (to the right of the configuration) to see what the colours look like.

4. Click copy code it provides.
Back in Moodle, you have to paste the HTML into a suitable location. For example, create a Text block, and in the Edit mode for the new block click on the <> button and paste the code in. The Twitter widget will then be displayed inside the block.