D2L Talk: Twitter Widgets

At yesterday’s first Tech Snackdown, Erin Mason shared how she has integrated Twitter into her courses as a way for students to be in touch with both their class and with other people in their field. In addition to talking about the “whys” of using it, she also went over some basic terms and concepts for using Twitter. We have hard copies of the presentation in the CET office, if you’d like to pick one up.

Erin showed a screenshot of how she embeds her course’s Twitter feed in D2L, so that’s what we’re going to walk through below. However, you don’t need an active Twitter account to do this in your course – one of the best things Erin shared yesterday is that even if you don’t want to participate on Twitter, having an account and following the “right” people (define that as you wish) can make Twitter a fantastic source for news and information. So, if you’re teaching, say, a course that has some field experience, you might figure out if your schools have a Twitter feed (CPS has several) and embed that in your course.

There are three types of Twitter widget embeds for your D2L course:

Your own Twitter feed (This is what I’m covering today)

A Twitter feed of a specific search term (How-to screencast in next week’s blog post)

A compilation of a few relevant Twitter feeds (How-to screencast in next week’s blog post)

Here’s how you embed a feed of your own Twitter account:

1. Go to https://twitter.com/about/resources/widgets.
2. Click My Website.

3. Click Profile Widget.

4. Enter your Twitter username.

5. Customize your Preferences (how many tweets displayed), Appearance (background and text colors) or Dimensions (widget size).
6. Click Finish and Grab Code.

7. Copy the code that appears.

Now, go to your D2L course. You’ll build the widget, and then you’ll add it to your homepage. To see instructions with images, click here.

1. Click Edit Course.
2. Click Widgets.
3. Click New Widget.
4. Enter a Title (e.g., Dr. Mason’s Twitter Feed).
5. Click the “Content” tab.
6. Click the Edit HTML Source icon.
7. Paste the Twitter embed code.
8. Click Update.
9. Click Save.

Note: You won’t see anything displayed here, but trust me, the code is in.

Now, you need to add your widget to your homepage.

1. Click Edit Course.
2. Click Homepages.
3. Click the title of your custom homepage (if you don’t have one yet, this document will show you how to make one).
4. Click the “Content/Layout” tab.
5. Click Add Widget wherever you want to put your Twitter feed.

If the homepage you’ve added your widget to is active, you’ll see it right away when you click Course Home. If you just created a homepage, you’ll need to make sure it’s active (also in this document) to view your widget.

Again, this is the basic process: get the code from the Twitter widget generator, create a custom widget in D2L, and add the widget to your homepage. Next week, I’ll show you how to set up a Twitter widget that displays searched terms or a group of Twitter feeds.