Wallwisher

This week, I got one of my classes to complete an activity using Wallwisher. It worked really well, but I learned a few things in the process!

The activity was to 'brainstorm' how our college uses the internet.  I got the students to start their discussions in small groups and jot notes down on paper.  I then showed them the wall I had created, and gave them the address.  I showed them how to post a message, and then asked them to add sticky notes for all the ideas they had jotted down.  The wall was displayed using our IWB so I could monitor the posts.

My mistakes

I forgot to mention the 'rules' before they started.  These were that they mustn't post messages about other students, all posts needed to have the right focus, and language used should be appropriate. As a result, we had a couple of dodgy (though not too serious) posts.  This highlighted error number two on my part - that I hadn't logged in to my Wallwisher account before we started.  I therefore needed to log in sharpish in order to delete the offending messages.

The outcome

After these initial teething problems, the students seemed to really enjoy being able to post their messages, and see other messages being posted by their peers.  I turned a blind eye to some of the slightly tenuous posts, because overall, the result was a good one - some really good ideas were posted up, and because everyone wanted to 'have a go', they all made a good effort to think of something original.

The limitations are currently that I cannot now 'lock down' the page to avoid the students posting again (which I'd like to do in case they get any ideas about posting something inappropriate when I'm not checking it), but other than that I thought it was a really good tool, and I'll definitely be using it again.