Sunday, December 9, 2007

Wiffiti--Brainstorming from Cell Phones


I have a new favorite brainstorming tool. Wiffiti! The best part of this tool is that students can brainstorm from their cell phones to a live screen on the web. Since students already text message almost continuously throughout any day, now they can use it for an educational purpose! There are a lot of fantastic teacher "controls" for Wiffiti such as "approving" messages before they are posted or not allowing content with inappropriate words. You can also keep the screen private or share it with the world! I love this tool. Although I imagine that there are a lot of applications for this tool in the classroom, one of the best is brainstorming. A teacher who would like their students to brainstorm some ideas can set up a Wiffiti screen (free of course), then tell students (for homework or in class) to text a special code to the general Wiffiti # (25622), along with their brainstorming idea. It will automatically (or the teacher can set it up to approve the messages before they are posted) post to the Wiffiti screen that the teacher set up. The screen is live so this could be done in class (if teachers are comfortable with cell phones in the classroom) at the spur-of-the-moment or for homework.

Another nice application of Wiffiti in schools is for "story telling." For example if students take a field trip to a local museum, they could text their observations, notes or what they learned during their field trip to the class Wiffiti screen and then back in class they could discuss their experiences. Wiffiti also works with Flickr (therefore the background images on Wiffiti could come from Flickr and since Flickr has a mobile option, students could also post their images from their field trip to Flickr and select one as the background for the class Wiffiti screen.

Feel free to try my screen by texting @kolb07 to 25622 and after you text "@kolb07" put a space and a message, it should automatically show up when the screen refreshes.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Very cool! I am going to give it a whirl tomorrow morning.

Liz Kolb, Ph.D. said...

Good Luck Joe! Let me know if you have any other ideas on how to use it with your students...thanks for reading.

Unknown said...

I used it in class today. It worked out pretty good, but there are a few features I wish they would add. I posted a review on my JoeWoodOnline blog if you are interested in reading it. I think Wiffiti could also be handy for a question board. Thanks again for the idea.

Anonymous said...

Great ideas for use in the classroom. I just used Wiffiti in a teacher staff development setting with great results. Read about it at my blog http://bit.ly/1pzih6

Keep that back channel rockin' in the classroom!

MrsPayne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mrs. Myers said...

Very cool tool! Thank you for the great ideas!

Disclaimers and Other Information about this blog. The information on the blog may be changed without notice and is not guaranteed to be complete, correct or up to date. The opinions expressed on the blog are the opinions of the individual author and may not reflect the opinions of anyone or any institution associated with the author. Links to external sources in the blog posts are provided solely as a courtesy to our blog visitors. All of the links on the sidebar under "recommended links" are links that the author believes to possibly have benefit in K-12 teaching and learning. All other sidebar links are related to cell phones and/or education but not necessary recommended as a K-12 learning resource by the author, some may be sponsor links and/or paid for image/banner ads. The author does not do paid reviews for her blog posts about web resources.Please contact Liz at elizkeren@yahoo.com for any inquires regarding this blog.
Creative Commons License Cell Phones in Learning by Liz Kolb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at cellphoneseinlearning.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://cellphonesinlearning.com.