Pages

Thursday 31 March 2011

Education Blog Awards

I received a Tweet this morning from@chrisrat asking me whether I know this blog had been nominated for Blog of the Year in the Education Blog Awards.

I have to admit that it hadn't even occurred to me to even look on the site as I never thought I would be nominated.

I'm amazed and very flattered that anyone would nominate me, so thank you whoever you are :)

Thank you also to everyone who stops by and reads. I'm always surprised that people find my ramblings interesting...and sometimes wonder whether I should even write half the things I do!!

Finally, of course, I would like to ask that, if you find this blog interesting and enjoy reading please take a second and vote for it... :)

Wednesday 30 March 2011

Linoit vs Wallwisher

I am a keen advocate of Wallwisher as it it an excellent tool for pupils to use both inside and outside of the classroom both for collaborative work and showing me what they have learned and enjoyed. However, since September I haev found it to be more and more unreliable, particularly in the early evening when most of my pupils would be doing homework (I hope). I therefore stopped giving Wallwwisher activities as homework for some time.


Feeling that my pupils were missing out on an opportunity to share their work quickly and easily I set about finding an alternative. Someone from my Twitter PLN (I'm afraid I can't remember who now, sorry!) suggested I try Linoit. I did and found it really user friendly too. I have used it a few times recently both with pupils as plenaries/homework and for crowdsourcing ideas for a CPD session I ran on Web tools to use in MFL.


How do the two tools compare? Well, I really like Wallwisher as I can set moderation, which I like to do if setting homework (cough...wasn't working ealier!!)...it means that all of the pupils don't just then copy the first person's piece of work as I can moderate it all once the homework deadline has passed, it also means if anythere inappropriate were to be posted it wouldn't appear at all. Linoit on the other hand doesn't appear to have a moderation feature (unless I'm missing something). Therefore, I'm loath to set it for homework. I love it in class for plenaries etc..., but am not sure whether it would be quite as good for homeowords.  However, I do really like that you can lovely brighly coloured stickies on Linoit and also easily add images. There also seems to be more space


Whichever tool I decided to go for, one thing is for sure...my pupils really like both and love that they can give me feedback...or just say "hi"!!


What do you think?


Have you used either?


Have you used both?


Have you discovered a good way to moderate Linoit?


Let me know...and maybe we can learn together!