Social Media

Facebook timeline

Facebook’s timeline provided an irresistible format to display and interact with resources from the Observing the 80s project. The Observing the 80s Facebook timeline allows users to explore and comment on ephemera, music, Mass Observation directives & responses and other resources from the project and beyond through a timeline interface. The Facebook timeline for Observing the 80s will be used as a teaching resource for students during the Thatcher’s Britain module taught at the University of Sussex, as well as being open to any Facebook user to add materials and comment on the assets generated during the project. We hope the Facebook timeline can provide an innovative way of content display, discovery and research as well as an exploration into of the use of social media in a learning context.

Explore the Observing the 80s Facebook Timeline

Credits : Our Facebook timeline was inspired by the Penguin English Library & The Science Musem’s Codebreaker – Alan Turing’s life and legacy projects and their innovative use of Facebook’s timeline for curating historical material. At the time of writing and as far as we are aware this in the first time a Facebook timeline has been used in e-learning or edutech.

Youtube playlist

Resources used in the University of Sussex course Thatcher’s Britain include the traditional print media readings, extracts and documents alongside digital material such as videos and audio so it seemed only natural to create a Youtube playlist for Observing the 80s to sit alongside the traditional reading list. Students at Sussex have indicated that their enjoyment of a module and engagement in learning can be greatly enhanced by the use of multimedia assets as part of module resources. Lucy’s Observing the 80s Youtube playlist provides both an introduction to where the digitised resources used in the project originate from as well as a visual and audio soundtrack for a time where music, lyrics and visuals wove themselves into the fabric of the decade.

Watch the Observing the 80s Youtube Video Playlist

Videos featured in the playlist are chosen specifically for the themes of the Thatcher’s Britain module at Sussex.

Disclaimer : Any adverts placed through the playlist are at Youtube’s advertisers discretion, and normally not from the 1980s. Brian Cox may be featured in this playlist.

Box of Broadcast (BoB)

Our BoB playlist works alongside the OER Observing the 80s, our Facebook page and YouTube channel. If you have access to BoB, you can view our playlist here. The playlist includes the British comedy-drama film,  My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), a BBC Four documentary on the 1984 miners’ strike and a Day by Day Omnibus BBC Radio 4 programme reflecting back to 1986.

Watch the Box of Broadcast playlist.