I have, of course, been an avid user of technology since I left the crib (much to my mother’s chagrin) so I’ve experimented with a lot of things for a long period of time. Working with our Upper School Director on an brainstorming activity, I introduced him to Wallwisher. Now, Wallwisher (and others of its ilk) have been around a long time and in fact, Wallwisher has just undergone some serious improvements in usability and design. For starters, it’s now called Padlet.
He didn’t want to rush in to folks using it without having experienced it before his project so I sent out a link to Faculty asking for feedback on our OneNote Binder system as we plan for summer upgrades. I set the board up to be a private link (so unless you have the link you can’t find the board) and unmoderated (people can put up anything on the board and have it seen instantly by others).
I also sent around to students another Wallwisher board asking for similar feedback. I used a private link again but set it up to be moderated (you know, just in case). Not surprisingly, I only had one comment that was off topic (and it wasn’t even rude). We have good kids who tend to approach these situations responsibly. Sure there’s some silly stuff but they know how to behave with faculty online.
I then went in to each comment and added replies to each comment; as moderator I can edit and delete anything that is posted (a handy thing to have). Not everyone is going to revisit the Wall but I will be dropping by the Grade Meetings to go over the important themes that have arisen from their feedback.
And then later today I received inquires from three other classes and clubs who wanted to use Wallwisher for collecting feedback and brainstorming. Just my share of the lucky 10,000!
