I’ve recently been asked about embedding a Twitter feed in Moodle.
You may already have links in your courses to relevant Twitter accounts but embedding a feed directly on the course page can help to engage learners. Amongst other benefits, it can connect your course to the real world promoting the relevance of the learning as well as keeping your content fresh without you having do anything!
The best way of presenting a Twitter feed in your course is to use the HTML block which then sits on the right-hand side of the course, independent of the more specific learning content in the main sections.
To add a Twitter feed:
- Go to your course and Turn editing on in order to Add a new block from the bottom of the ‘Navigation drawer’ on the left-hand side.
- Once you’ve added the HTML block, locate your (new HTML block) in the blocks on the right-hand side, and click on the ‘gear’ icon to ‘Configure’.
- You can give the block a name if you wish (“Twitter”, for example) and then you need to click on the Show/hide advanced buttons in the Content’ field’s editor (1, in the image below) and then click on the HTML icon (2).
- You then need to replace the existing code in the content area with the following code:
<a class="twitter-timeline"
href="https://twitter.com/oxfordbrookes"
data-tweet-limit="5">
Tweets by @oxfordbrookes
</a>
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
- You’ll then need to change the URL (1, below) in the code to link to the Twitter account that you wish to embed in the course. You’ll also need to change the text* (2, below) to something more suitable:
*the text “Tweets by @oxfordbrookes” will only show if, for any reason, the twitter feed can’t be displayed
- Scroll down and click on Save changes to return to your course page. Your twitter feed should now be displayed in a block on the right-hand side.
DMeLD Digest 
Hi Richard – to include the BBC Business Newsfeed in a Moodle Module – is it a similar process?
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Hi Helen,
BBC Business has its own Twitter feed so you could always apply the steps in this article and use the @BBCBusiness Twitter feed.
Alternatively, if you want your block to reflect the latest stories on the BBC Business website, Moodle has its own dedicated RSS feeds block to take advantage of the RSS feed provided by the BBC.
1. Turn editing on in the course, click Add a block from the bottom of the ‘Navigation drawer’ on the left-hand side and select the Remote RSS feeds block .
2. Locate the newly-added ‘Remote news feed’ block in your course and click on the ‘gear’ icon to configure.
3. Click on the Add/edit feeds link and then Add a new feed, entering:
http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/business/rss.xmlas the ‘Feed URL’.4. Once added, return to the course page and click on the ‘gear’ icon next to the ‘Remote news feed’ block.
5. You’ll now notice that ‘BBC News – Business’ is included in the ‘Choose the feeds which you would like to be make available in this block’ list, click on it to select it.
6. Feel free to configure the other settings as you wish, then click on Save changes.
On returning to the course, you’ll notice that the block is now populated with the latest stories from the BBC Business webpage:
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Superb – thank you Richard! I’ve been wanting to ask this for weeks!
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