Wallwisher: collaborative notice board.

Wallwisher lets you create online noticeboards. It is very quick and easy to create a wall with a custom web address. Users can then log on and comment on the wall.

To create a wall, you need to choose a little picture to represent the topic (or upload your own). You also need to choose a title, pick a background colour and choose an address for your wall. You need to put in a name and email address. Wallwisher will send you a password to this address so you can log in and manage your wall later.

Once you have created the wall you need to give out the address. It might be a good idea to create a bit.ly shortcut so that children do not have to type in a long address.

 

Visitors to your wall, contribute by adding comments. These can be just text or could include images, audio or video they have found on the internet.

Fellow educational blogger Tom Barrett has put together a slideshow bringing together interesting ways of using wallwisher in the classroom.

Create word clouds: Wordle

Wordle is a free website that allows you to create a pretty 'word cloud' from a selection of text. Here as a wordle I created by pasting in the poem 'We are going on a bear hunt'.

To create a Wordle you can copy and paste text form another website or document.

Another way to create a Wordle, is to type in your own words. I have found this to be a great, motivating way of getting children to come up with descriptive language or to create a bank of specialist vocabulary or key words to print out and use for reference.

We used Wordle to create a list of words to use instead of 'said' as part of our work in literacy on reported speech.


How to create a Wordle
1) Go to Wordle.net and click on 'Create'.
2) Put some words in (type them in or copy and paste). Click 'Go'.
3) Tweak your Wordle using the menus to change the way it looks and the words it includes (or just click 'randomise' until you get a Wordle you like!)
4) Print your Wordle.

How to save your Wordle
One annoying thing about Wordle is that it doesn not provide an option to save a copy of your Wordle on your computer.

If you are using an interactive whiteboard you can click on 'print' and then change your printer to your interactive whiteboard to get a copy on there.

To save the Worldle as a picture file on your computer you need to click 'print screen' on your keyboard and then click paste in Paint, or an alternative image editing program.

Online brain-storming: Bubbl.us

On-line tools can provide a great, motivating way for children to collect and organise their ideas about a subject. Here is one that I have been using in various subjects.

Bubbl.us

This free web tool allows users to easily create simple, attractive and effective diagrams made up of 'bubbles' to organise

ideas. The 'bubbles' can be edited to change their colour, size using simple buttons aound the edge of each bubble. The finished document can then be printed out or saved as a PDF file.

Possible uses

You could use Bubbl.us collect a classes ideas and conceptions about a subject, or you could create a linear set of bubbles to map out the plot of a story.

Collaboration

Bubbl.us can be used without logging in, although creating an account allows you to save your diagrams to the website and share them with other Bubbl.us users. Perhaps you could collaborate with another class on the same Bubbl.us document by setting up two class accounts.