The Teacher's Hub

Application: Wallwisher

Wallwisher is an online application that is easy to use, setup and lends itself to some great applications in the classroom. It is essentially an online noticeboard, that uses the ‘sticky note’ format for messages. Easy to set up, there is no need to have an account; although signing up does give the user some advantages in managing multiple walls. To enable you to ‘dip’ your toes in, there is a demo wall, which you can write and play with the tools without any consequence.

When writing on the wall, you are limited to 160 characters (nods to Twitter and SMS) but you can add images, video, music and links to web pages, so you can add a lot more content than just the usual text. And that’s what helps make it so practical for the classroom. I have been in touch with @missbrownsword in the UK via Twitter. She has used it for her Year 6 geography classes. Sarah tells me;

I’m using wallwisher with my year 6 geography classes (I have 2). Our topic is ‘How are you connected?’ and we’re looking at our connections to other countries. Last year I got them to list 5 countries they’re connected to, write them down and bring them in but this year I’ve asked them to post their lists to wallwisher. I’ve set up 2 so the classes have one each http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/6sgeog and http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/6ageog , feel free to have a look. The children were really excited today when I told them what they’d have to do and it’s definitely improved motivation, some of them have already done the homework! Also I think it will make it much easier for us to discuss and compare our connections to different countries in the next lesson as I can dispay the walls on my IWB. Next the children will be plotting the connections onto maps and after that choosing one country to do a presentation on, I’m planning on introducing some more new things for them during that part too.

Being the end of year here in Aus, I haven’t been able to use it for and extended curriculum, but I did use it to send messages to a student who had recently been in hospital.   Some students made her a physical card, but I got all of my students to write to a message to her. I was able to edit and correct any errors, and students could upload pictures and link to movies. We then emailed her the link, and she was able to join in from home. I agree with Sarah, it certainly helped motivate students and provided a novel way of keeping in touch with my students.

With options to create your own URL link, 12 themes and controls over who can post and edit notes there’s some great potential for teachers in the classroom to use this tool. It’s not just for glorified sticky notes to yourself to pick up some milk – although that application can work too.

Being a firm believer in ‘learning by using’ I’d encourage you to have a look yourself (http://wallwisher.com) and contact Sarah @missbrownsword if you need some further ideas or help. I’m sure too, that if you are on Twitter and put out the call to your PLN for some advice or ideas they would help.

* I originally wrote this article in December last year, and looking through my drafts, realized I hadn’t published it.

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