How to Participate in Live Web 2.0 Coverage of the MESSENGER Flyby
Posted by DrJeff
Copyright 2009 | About this blog
This page was originally created to support this Blog’s Special Post for live Web 2.0 coverage of MESSENGER’s flyby of Mercury on Sept 29, 2009. For continued coverage of the MESSENGER mission through orbital insertion on March 18, 2011, please visit the MESSENGER Updates page on this blog.
Quick Navigation for the BotU Special Post on the MESSENGER Flyby
Other Sub-pages:
1. Schedule for MESSENGER Flyby Events and Web 2.0 Live Coverage
2. Ideas for Lessons in the Classroom, and Educational Resources
3. The Mission Scientists, the Voices of Mission Control, and their Links
4. Witness History: See Mercury Before Sunrise! Sept 29-Oct 1, 2009
There are a number of ways to tune in to live coverage. Each has advantages and disadvantages. Using Twitter is addressed in Section 1, Facebook in Section 2, and Section 3 addresses how to try and get the feed if your organization blocks Twitter.com and other social networking sites. Please see Section 4 for a description of how you might want to set up your room for coverage of the live events.
1. Using Twitter
Disadvantages:
None, UNLESS you are blocked from accessing Twitter by e.g., your school district. If so, go to Section 3 below.
Advantages:
If you have a Twitter account, you can read tweets by any of the Voices of Mission Control (VoMC), eavesdrop on replies by other Twitter users, and read your own replies—hence see and participate in all conversations with a VoMC—even if you are not “Following” on Twitter the VoMC or those with whom they are conversing.
Using Twitter:
1. Each Twitter user has a Username name, e.g., mine is “doctorjeff”.
2. Whenever a Twitter user sends out a tweet (a message) the message starts with their Username, e.g., a recent tweet I sent:
doctorjeff TEACHERS! MESSENGER’s Sep29 Mercury flyby, Live Web2.0 coverage from Mission Control. http://bit.ly/3kDn7b
3. Whenever someone replies to a tweet by hitting the REPLY button, the Username of the original sender is automatically put in the reply tweet with the “@” symbol in front of the Username. As an example, here is a reply to one of my tweets by the user singin4theearth:
singin4theearth @doctorjeff Just beginning to explore the wealth of information and fun science at your blog – very cool! http://blogontheuniverse.org/
Notice that “doctorjeff” is in all my original tweets, and “@doctorjeff” is in all the reply tweets back to me (assuming the reply was generated using the reply button, or the sender actually typed “@doctorjeff” —hitting the REPLY button is easier.)
Therefore:
** To see ALL the tweets that comprise the conversations with the VoMC (the VoMC’s tweets and the replies), go to your Twitter home page, and in the search box enter the VoMC’s Username WITHOUT the “@” in front of the name” e.g., “doctorjeff”.
but it that’s too much information for you, then:
** To see just the tweets FROM the VoMC, go to the VoMC’s Twitter home page, e.g., http://twitter.com/doctorjeff. You can do this fast by (again using me as the example) just clicking on either “doctorjeff” or “@doctorjeff'” in any tweet that includes these words.
or:
** To see just REPLIES to the VoMC’s tweets, go to your Twitter home page, and in the search box enter the VoMC’s Username WITH the “@” in front of the name” e.g., “@doctorjeff”.
Connecting to the VoMCs via Twitter:
Here are the Twitter URLs with Usernames for the VoMCs:
The Voice of the MESSENGER Spacecraft
Twitter: http://twitter.com/MESSENGER2011
Note: there are no replies possible to this feed.
Dr. Christina Dorr (Ohio)
Twitter: http://twitter.com/CHD2009
Gene Gordon (New York)
Twitter: http://twitter.com/porchdragon
Annette Iwamoto (California)
Twitter: http://twitter.com/aniwam
Sally Jensen (New Hampshire)
Twitter: http://twitter.com/cosmicfrog
Julie Taylor (California)
Twitter: http://twitter.com/julietaylorca
Dr. Jeff Goldstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/doctorjeff
HAVE FUN!!
2. Using Facebook
We unfortunaely do not have access to Facebook while on site at the Applied Physics Laboratory. However, the Voices of Mission Control that use Facebook will all have a Twitter Feed on their Facebook page.
Disadvantages:
A big one: if you are blocked from accessing Facebook by e.g., your school district, go to Section 3 below.
While you can follow their Twitter feeds at their Facebook pages, there is no way for you to enter into the conversation with the VoMC from Facebook. You can send the VoMCs an email. (Their email addresses are HERE.) But please know that the VoMCs will not be continuously checking email. If they answer yours, they will answer it with a Tweet, and you’ll see it in their Twitter feed.
Advantages:
If you are on Facebook, you can view the Twitter feed and have a conversation with your Facebook Friends about it.
It still allows the potential for you to enter into the conversation via email.
Using Facebook:
Here are the URLs for the three VoMCs using Facebook:
Gene Gordon (New York)
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/genegordon
Sally Jensen (New Hampshire)
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Sally-Jensen/1506944209
Julie Taylor (California)
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1072246932
3. If You Don’t Have Access to Twitter or Facebook
There are school districts and other organizations that want to participate in the flyby conversations, but actively block Twitter.com and other Social Networking sites. In addition, there are myriad ways in which the blocking is implemented. The most effective way for us to address this issue is for us to capture the Twitter feed from Twitter.com on our side of the fence, and embed the data in a web page with a URL that is not Twitter.com. So as long as you can access the URLs of these pages, you should be able to follow along. However, this will likely not work for all sites with blocking. It depends on how your server interprets the embedded data and its source.
Limits on your active participation using this approach: since you are not on Twitter, and therefore unable to send your own tweets, each page includes the VoMC’s email address allowing you to email them with a reply or a question. But please know that the VoMCs will not be continuously checking email. If they answer yours, they will answer it with a Tweet, and you’ll see it in their Twitter feed.
So here are 3 options to try:
a. At Blog on the Universe (this Blog), we have put up a page—for each VoMC—that provides their Twitter feed. The Blog URLs for each VoMC are listed below.
Description of this feed: to provide an easy means of following the conversations, these pages include separate feeds for the tweets sent out by the VoMC, and replies/comments/mentions from everyone else. It is a dynamic feed, meaning it automatically refreshes every 30 seconds.
b. At the official MESSENGER Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) website, we have put up a page—for each VoMC—that provides their Twitter feed. The E/PO site URLs for each VoMC are listed below.
Description of this feed: these pages only provide the tweets sent out by the VoMCs. It is not a dynamic feed, which means that you need to continuously do a manual refresh to see more tweets.
Try both options above using my (Jeff Goldstein’s) URLs provided below, since I have extensive outbound tweets as well as replies/comments/mentions. If you cannot see a very significant list of my messages, including time stamps, on either my Blog page or my E/PO page, then both these options have failed for you.
Here is then the final option to try:
c. Go to any of the pages at the E/PO website listed below, and click on the “Twitter page” link under the VoMCs bio. See if that gets you directly to Twitter.
These represent our best attempts to let everyone participate.
Using the VoMC Twitter Feeds:
Here are the URLs for the VoMCs Twitter feeds:
The Voice of the MESSENGER Spacecraft
Blog: http://blogontheuniverse.org/twitter/MESSENGER2011/
E/PO Page: http://www.messenger-education.org/main/epo.php
Dr. Christina Dorr (Ohio)
Blog: http://blogontheuniverse.org/twitter/CHD2009/
E/PO Page: http://www.messenger-education.org/fellows/cdorr.php
Gene Gordon (New York)
Blog: http://blogontheuniverse.org/twitter/porchdragon/
E/PO Page: http://www.messenger-education.org/fellows/ggordon.php
Annette Iwamoto (California)
Blog: http://blogontheuniverse.org/twitter/aniwam/
E/PO Page: http://www.messenger-education.org/fellows/aiwamoto.php
Sally Jensen (New Hampshire)
Blog: http://blogontheuniverse.org/twitter/cosmicfrog/
E/PO Page: http://www.messenger-education.org/fellows/sjensen.php
Julie Taylor (California)
Blog: http://blogontheuniverse.org/twitter/julietaylorca/
E/PO Page: http://www.messenger-education.org/fellows/jtaylor.php
Dr. Jeff Goldstein
Blog: http://blogontheuniverse.org/twitter/doctorjeff/
E/PO Page: http://www.messenger-education.org/fellows/jgoldstein.php
4. Setting up your Room for Participation
Regardless of how you connect, we suggest reading Section 3 above, which details Blog on the Universe pages we have set up that contain the twitter feeds. You might consider projecting one of these pages on a large screen in front of your room. The pages are set up for ease of following the conversations, and they automatically refresh every 30 seconds.
