Using Wall Wisher in the Classroom

On Friday I ran a short workshop about using online tools to brainstorm with students. One of the resources that I shared and had folks try out was Wall Wisher. Although not the most robust tool for brainstorming, Popplet is currently my favorite, Wall Wisher is easy to use and seemed to be a hit with my audience. For that reason I'm re-running a couple of posts about using Wall Wisher in the classroom. I hope you can glean an idea or two from them.


From April 2010.
Today, I showed my special education students a short (18 minutes) video about cultural changes that took place in the US during the 1920's. After the video we discussed what they saw. Then I had students search online for other examples of cultural change in the 1920's. When they found examples they put them onto a Wallwisher wall that I projected onto a wall in my classroom. The wall started with just text being added to the wall and quickly progressed to YouTube videos being added to the wall. Once every student had contributed a video we stopped, watched the videos, and discussed.










At first my students were a little unsure of what Wallwisher is all about, but they quickly figured it out and they all enjoyed the class. The two comments in the screen capture below capture the vibe of the room.








For those who have never tried Wallwisher before, it is very easy to use. To get started simply go to Wallwisher.com and click "build a wall." Then title your wall, choose a URL for your wall, enter your name and email, and start adding sticky notes to the wall. Sticky notes added to a Wallwisher wall can contain up to 160 characters of text plus links to images and videos. You can choose to make your wall private or public. If you choose the public option anyone can quickly add sticky notes to your wall. If you want to approve additions to the wall before they appear, that's an option too. Choosing the public settings is allows for the quickest set-up and use of Wallwisher as you only need to give students the URL of your wall in order for them to add notes to the wall.

Also from April 2010.
Tom Barrett has a slideshow about Wallwisher in his Interesting Ways Series. Currently, there are nineteen ideas in the slideshow. If you have more ideas to add, contact Tom Barrett using the contact information in the last slide. The slideshow is embedded below.