Individualisation On Collaborative Walls

Wallwisher is not a new kid on the block with many educators using this tool to enable children to let their individual thoughts or knowledge be shared amongst the many.  The potential for using this tool in schools, where it is not blocked, is huge due to the open nature of the product: it is not just one thing it can be many.  This is exemplified through the various suggestions educators have come up with below:

Ways to use Wallwisher in Education:

16 Ways To Use A Wall

Ideas from the crowd

Tom Barrett's Crowd Source Ideas

It is fine to come up with wonderful ways to embed various technology into the learning environment however, what do children think about using Wallwisher?  One teacher, Mrs Brownsword, undertook a little research to ascertain what her children thought of this tool for learning.  Most thought it was fun and easy with few seeing the collaborative aspect of it.  This could be due to the fact they created their own stickies and did not view the whole process but the individual one.  Sometimes when working collaboratively technology might actually stop this process from occurring due to children contributing to a product from individual machines or at different times and places.  Although I advocate that children should not all be around one machine with only one hand on the mouse and the rest of the group observing but using collaborative tools like Google Docs,  PrimaryPad or Mindmeister, the individual's contribution to the whole must be made clear to ensure children know they are working collaboratively or as Johnson and Jonson (1990) state cooperatively.

Cooperative learning, according to Murdoch and Wilson (2004), is where children are working towards a shared goal and this shared goal must be made explicit at the start.  This notion that children must know what is expected of them is further exemplified by Johnston and Jonson (1990) to enable effective cooperative learning.  Working cooperatively is not just a simply matter of placing children in groups but consideration should be taken into some of the five key elements of cooperative learning as identified by Johnson et al (1998):

* Positive Interdependence;
* Individual Accountability;
* Face-to-face Interaction;
* Interpersonal and Small Group Skills;
* Group Processing.

Positive Interdependence: children need to work together to reach a shared goal where 'each student is not only required to complete their part of the work, but ensure that others do likewise' (Gillies & Ashmand, 2003: 35).

Individual Accountability: Each member is accountable for their own work and how it contributes to the whole.

Face-to-face Interaction: enables effective communication and supports thinking skills.

Interpersonal and Small Group Skills: children must learn to work together as a group to develop social skills which 'pupils do not come to school with the social skills they need to collaborate effectively with others'  (Jolliffe, 2007: 92).

Group Processing: time to reflect on how the group worked is required to ensure that the skills of cooperative learning can be developed further.

Working collaboratively with others, over time and place, using technology is a key skill that our young children must develop to enable them to survive their globalised futures.  Using technology may not hit the five key elements suggested above exactly but have strands of the elements permeating through the process.  the only element that may be questioned would be the face-to-face Interaction where some collaborative applications do not allow this.  However, tools like  Google Docs and PrimaryPad allow students to use the chat area to clarify their thoughts and brainstorm whilst the main area is used to create the product.  The importance of collaboration is emphasised in one of the four capacities, successful learners, of Scotland's CfE as shown in the image below:


The benefits of Wallwisher and its use in education are apparent from the links above where different curricular areas are addressed.  However, allowing the individual's voice heard in the crowd was my main focus for implementing this tool into a lecture setting with student teachers.  All too often students are lectured to at University where the knowledgeable one, the lecturer, imparts their knowledge to the unacknowledged, the student.  Timely questions are asked with only 5 % of students answering 95 % of the questions.  The same ones put their hands up each lecture and the same ones shy away and allow others to talk.  When I asked students why this was the response was that the did not like speaking out to such a large audience, frightened they would say the wrong thing or simply were quite happy to listen.  Finding ways to engage all students in inputs was one of the main challenges I faced when I came to University as I was used to engaging primary children in the learning environment but they were not all sitting in rows with over one hundred others watching the sage on the stage.

One way to engage the mass of students was through using their handheld devices.  Text me questions or answers rather than the one hand one voice method.  Respond to questions by voting or textual replies using handheld devices and the online tool Polleverywhere.  Wallwisher was the next tool that appeared to have the potential to enable interaction during lecture where all voices could be heard.  To test the waters, I created various walls with questions that I wished to ask a small group of students during an ICT input:

What will the future of education be in ten year's time?

What they hoped to learn in the ICT module.

What social media tools they currently used.

What are the educational benefits of handheld learning?

Each of these questions were asked throughout the input to break up the monotony of listening to my voice, involve all students in the responses and to record their thoughts.  This was undertaken in an ICT suite which worked well with the only problem being the stickies overlapping.  It was only until later that I realised the creator of the page is the only one who could move the stickies around not all the contributors.  Minor aspect to an otherwise excellent tool.

The next step is how to incorporate this tool with a larger body of students and possibly in a lecture theatre.  I decided to test Wallwisher on the iPhone to ascertain if it could be used.  It became clear there are limitations to using Wallwisher this way:

1.  You can not create a sticky;

2.  You can not close a link down;

3.  You can add an link;

4.  You can add text to a stiky already created.

Barriers are just creative hurdles that make your mind think innovatively. It is still possible to use Wallwisher with handheld devices.  I created an account with Wallwisher for my students, Individualisation, where all students will use the same username and password when working collaboratively.  There are two advantages to this: all children are in one account and the teacher does not need to create many accounts and deal with children forgetting passwords and the settings can be set so that only the account user's can edit the wall for security purposes.  With an account create stickies are created  beforehand with no text in them.  Group names or student's names can be added to each sticky and when the student opens the page with their handheld device they are able to enter text in the sticky assigned to them.  It is therefore possible to let everyone's voices be heard on collaborative walls.

What Can Student Teachers Do When On Placement?

All too often when I teach student primary teachers ways to use Web 2.0 tools the first question they ask is, 'Can I use this application in schools or is it blocked?'.  Most of the time I do not have the answer as the application maybe new or is not getting used in schools by many.  Although I try to give the students a balance between what they can use and what they will hopefully be able to embed in their future practice, it can be frustrating for them to go through four years not being able to implement current technologies.  Living in the past is not what our future primary teachers are trained to be, they are the ones who will teach the future generation and they should be able to access tools that enable collaboration, innovation etc...

So to answer their question, 'Can I use this application in schools?', and to hopefully help myself and others who provide training to practitioners out with our own geographical location, I posted a tweet on Twitter asking the 'crowd' if Wallwisher was blocked in their Local Authority.  Most replies say it is not with some having the problem of their computers still running on IE6 which will not support Wallwisher.

With the information provided from fellow teachers I decided to be more organised and create a shared Google Doc - ICT in Schools to collate this information and hopefully build a depository of what can and can't be used in schools, primarily in Scotland, however, the rest of the UK and elsewhere would be interesting to know too.  Is it only certain areas that are blocking or allowing children access to the tools they can access at home?

I would be grateful if you could help me providing me with information regarding what is blocked or not blocked for Wallwisher, Twitter, Voki, Wordle, Youtube and Delicious.  More applications will be added over time, however, this will get the ball rolling.

To access the collaborative document go to ICT in School.

Find your Local Authority (all are in for Scotland) or type in your Authority/ Location in the appropriate row. Use the numbers suggested on the form to state: 0 - blocked, 1 - only teacher access and 2 - access for all.


Over the next few months I will collate this data and create a report which I will share will the global community.  Thanks in advance for your help in preparing our student teachers for 'on the job' teaching and for helping others be prepared for presenting workshops in other places around the world.