Monday, February 1, 2010

Web 2.0 Tool






What is a Web 2.0 tool?  According to Webopedia, the Web 2.0 is “the term given to describe a second generation of the World Wide Web that is focused on the ability for people to collaborate and share information online.”  There are many of these Web 2.0 tools that are useful in education.  A new one that I think is easy to use and is very flexible for integration into the curriculum is wallwisher.com.  This free site allows users to add a post-it note with up to one hundred sixty characters to a wall, and others can collaborate and add to the same wall at the same time.  The “wall of post-its” can be private if desired, filtering is possible, and the post-it notes can be moved. The post-its can include text, images, links, video and music.  The opportunities for collaboration with students are endless, and an email account is not required either.



In my district, students use paper post-it notes while reading a novel to document various literary elements as well as character traits etc.  It would be very exciting for students to be able to use the wallwisher.com tool to add character traits, story elements, examples of literary elements and even quotes to the “novel wall” to expand the pool of ideas of the class while studying a novel.  Another lesson idea for this tool would be for the teacher to post videos of an abstract concept, for example the laws of motion, and students would add a post-it to describe the particular concept in one hundred sixty characters or less, which requires a great deal of critical thinking.  Another example would be for the students to take notes on the post-it about a historical event, for example the causes of WWI, and then other students would add their brief comments about the resulting effects. Similarly, a music teacher could have the musical notes displayed on a post-it and the students would add the audio file of that music to the wall.  The possibilities are endless. 

Although this Web 2.0 tool was not initially meant for use in education, I think it would be a great tool to use in school for all grade levels as well as with teachers.  Resources that teachers use could be posted on the wall for others to view.  The benefits of this site are the ease of use and the flexibility with file type.  I am excited to use this with my students to see if they think it is as much fun to use as I do.

5 comments:

  1. Nice! This is one I was unfamiliar with!

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  2. I love this tool. I think it would be a great way to collaborate on any topic in any lesson. Or, as a method of posting information on homework, agenda items, and classroom news. The possibilities are endless.

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  3. Very interesting tool. I liked your many ideas for how to incorporate this into classroom work with your students. I do have one question; would you be having students use this during classtime or at home while they complete the assignment. If you use this during class, would each student have access to a computer or would they use them in stations. If at home, would they have set times to access the posts or how would you monitor their posts. Sorry for the amount of questions, I'm just very curious as to how you see this being used. Thanks for the tool info!

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  4. I would use it with the students in class. I only have 10 students in my class so I can sign out a lap top cart. I find that my students give very thoughtful responses when repling on a computer. I would love for them to uses this at home but many of my students don't internet at home so in order to complete an assignment they would need to get themselves to the library. I have talked with other teachers about using this program and my suggestion to them was to set up stations.

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  5. Wow, very cool and "green" idea! I cannot get over the fact that everything that we used to do as kids can now all be done on the Internet. The idea of post-its was such a novelty back in the day but now students can't stand them because they are overused. I can bet that this new idea of collaboration will get the kids excited to use post-it's again and also really get them involved, in language arts, like you said. Do you have any ideas on how to use this tool with math students? Is this a free web 2.0 tool? Thanks for sharing!

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