I enjoyed exploring these tools this week. My top two are Wordle and Wallwisher.
I used Wordle last fall in my LA class. Students wrote a personal essay about someone they admired in their life. We used it first by pasting the entire text into Wordle to analyze word usage. Then, they created a cover page for their paper using common words in the paper. The Wordle cover page was stunning. A number of students gave their paper as a holiday gift.
A couple of new ideas came from this exploration: using it for weekly spelling words or creating a TA list for the classroom door. I will continue to use it occasionally to analyze writing.
Playing with Wallwisher I imagine using it for some of the formative assessments I ask students to think about. They are often in small groups and need to discuss and summarize their ideas about a scientific concept (such as: What is a Scientific Theory?, or a definition of Matter after grouping various things.) This is done to examine misconceptions and attempt to get the story straight. It would be fun to have each group add their thoughts via stickies on the Whiteboard through this website. The discussions could be very interesting. I think I would try it first in a small group setting to iron out any issues, such as anonymous posting.
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