Wallwisher and Glogster
Here's another way to give students (or teachers or anyone) an opportunity to share thoughts, ideas, questions, products, and anything else you can think of: a digital "wall" or "poster" to display websites, text, photos, videos, and audio. Two such sites are briefly reviewed here. Wallwisher takes the functional approach, using the idea of a wall with sticky notes, quick and easy to use. Glogster allows the creating of posters which can be as elaborate as the user wishes. Each would be quite useful in its own way, depending on your purpose for using such a tool.
The partial screenshot at the left of the demo wall on the wallwisher website looks like sticky notes on a wall. Because it's technology, a note's content is not limited to text, but can be a link to an image, audio, video, or website. The notes are meant to be short, as text is limited to 160 characters. The additional information opens in a small window on top of the wall. Just as with paper sticky notes, you can drag them around to organize them. When you create your wall, you have the option for viewing or posting to to be done by everyone or limited to yourself, and you can opt to approve every posting if you wish. You have twelve themes to choose from, including lined yellow notepad paper and wood, and the photo added to the title completes the professional look. Once it's set up, all you have to do is to double-click anywhere on the wall and a sticky note appears ready for your message. Too easy! For some possible uses, in case you haven't already come up with some on your own, see the last paragraph of this post.
Glogster is available for general use, but also has Glogster EDU for educational use, which provides a private, safe platform for students. Most sharing sites have a minium age for registration and use; Glogster EDU users must be at least 13 years old. You can try it out without registering, so you might want to play with it a little. You'll find more options for content here, including "grabbing" live audio, video, or photo from your computer. Glogster gives you more ways to be creative, so its posters can be quite attractive. If you'd like a better idea than you can get from the sample at left, check out some of the new glogs. You can also check the bottom of the Glogster EDU webpage.
I can think of several uses, and you probably can, too, for tools like these. "Seventeen Interesting Ways to use Wallwisher in the Classroom" is a Google Docs presentation with lots of screen shots, tips, and ideas to help you get started. Either tool could work with the ideas given, but you might have a preference for one or the other for any given task.
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