Wait, Twitter did that?

Civil War on Twitter
      Recently, during the lead-up to the Civil War anniversary, Twitter did something that, to me, is extremely useful and outside of the box type thinking.  A historian created an account where he was going to use the actual dates and people associated with major events of the times leading up to the Civil War and tweet as if they were happening real-time.  I can't imagine a better use of Twitter for educational value than this.  The fact that we had someone who had studied this period in history and then wrote about it as if it were happening today is just so cool! 
     When I think about Twitter and its primary use in this world (allowing people that most of us really don't care about to describe their most intimate experiences at Starbucks.) I find myself stunned to see such a practical and educationally appropriate use for this tool.  Now don't get me wrong, I do have a Twitter feed of my own, but just like my status update on Facebook, it never gets used.  However, a feed like this could be used as a daily warmup activity for students in a Social Studies class to determine what important event happened on this day and how might people have felt during this time.  To me, this is a great way to use Twitter; instead of making it all about yourself, use it to teach others about themselves and create a connection to history.