Wallwisher

Now with my first field study over .... I now have more questions than ever!  The quality of feedback definitely varied from student to student, and from day to day.  I've considered creating a document for each student and copying over their comments for them to look at and reflect on ... but that sounds like a lot of work for 90 students.  For some, without them getting to see what "convincing" explanations look like, I'm not sure they will ever "get" how to explain in a satisfying way.  I felt I had run into a bit of a road block on this one.  With only 1/3 of the students actually participating, I was feeling somewhat discouraged .... yes most of my A students were engaging in the process, while many of the students who really needed my help were not.  No different than in the past when I would ask them to come for help.

Tonight as I opened my google docs I saw that the slideshow created by Tom Barrett on how to use Wallwisher caught my eye.  My graduate program instructor Tom had used it at one point in the fall term but I hadn't really thought about it again.  Would this be a way to have the students post feedback so that others could see ?  This could be done relatively anonymously .... students could be given a number so that if they chose not to put their actual name, I'd still know they had posted.  Once I started checking things out, I found that you could embed the wall right on your sharepoint!  I've gone ahead and posted a question about the midterm and I'm curious to see if there is any posts during the Xmas break.  I plan on giving this a try in January to see how the students respond to the different approach.

One of the suggestion was to have students post their photos in a sticky ... I think I like this even better than the online album we used this term.  Might have to give this a try too!