Sunday, January 20, 2013

Wallwisher Expedition

I've been fussing with a bit of a problem at school and have been looking for a solution.  I lead a photography club for 5th graders after school on Thursdays.  I do this on my own time and the club meetings are a half hour each.  I teach a brief lesson and then give students a photography assignment for the week.   Unfortunately with over 20 members in the club it is difficult to share photos, teach the lessons, and then give the children club time to take photos all in a brief half hour time frame.  I think I may have found a web 2.0 tool that will work for our club.  Wallwisher just might do the trick.  Wallwisher is an online bulletin board that's fairly kid friendly.  I've created a wall at http://wallwisher.com/wall/WCESPhotographyClub where the students can go online and read assignments, link to the handouts, see special notices, and post their own photo assignments.  The site is very user friendly.  It took me about five minutes to set it up and I think it will be fairly easy to teach the students how to use it as well.  I especially like the fact that it isn't chronological so students don't have to do a lot of scrolling to find the information they need.  I can access the site using the school computer which is beneficial for both myself and my students.  We'll see how it goes.  I expect to introduce students to the web tool and show them how to use it on Tuesday.

2 comments:

  1. This would be a cool online announcement board to use with your students and parents. Where would you have to link your handouts to? Like from a google doc or an uploaded document? I have all of my "extra" handouts on my google website, but this might be a more user friendly way to provide these for my students and parents.

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  2. Hey Julie, this is really interesting. I like how you're using it for your photo club. It seems like a useful place to gather all of the pictures you and your students take. I read your other post as well and saw that your students were having some difficulty with the file sizes. Were you able to tweak it to meet the needs of you and your students?
    My school is really into exit tickets and formative assessments this year. I wonder if I could have this open on my laptop and the students could write a "note" throughout class. That way we could save it and refer back to it, unlike the paper sticky notes.

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