I’ve been a fan of WallWisher since I viewed Kelly Hines’ Little Kids, Big Possibilities presentation for K12Online.  The super-simple, web-based app allows for a sticky note backchannel that can be sorted and organized and embedded. 

Yesterday we decided to use it for a content analysis activity.  In a primary source activity, our US History 2 class is viewing video clips of a variety of old sitcoms to determine what popular culture reveals about 20th century history.  (I was surprised to discover that many of our student had never heard of Leave it to Beaver!) 

We set up a wall for each of the six clips our students would be viewing and analyzing and discussed possible code words that might be used for analysis.

Here is our sorted wall relating to a clip of All in the Family.  We’ve sorted.  The next steps are to think about what we’ve coded and compare these codes to the codes for our Leave it to Beaver clip and to figure out what these clips reveal about American life and to discuss how changes over the decades might be reflected through the media of the sitcom.

Walls are web pages on which individuals or groups can publicly or privately post messages in the form of 160-character or fewer sticky notes.  Posting is as easy as double-clicking on a screen. Walls might be used for brainstorming, collecting feedback, backchanneling, sending greetings, or simple note-taking.  Students may register or contribute without registration by entering an email address.  You may use an existing Google account.

Kelly’s presentation shares how the tool might be used thoughtfully in an elementary program.

No related posts.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 6:47 am and is filed under Uncategorized . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.