Responding and Reflecting; Collaborating and Collecting

If you've ever used Wallwisher, you know how powerful such a tool can be in creating collaboration and on-line dialogue between students.

Lino It is a similar tool, with an easier interface. Use Lino It to collect feedback, write together, and synchronously respond and reflect. This online bulletin board allows anonymous and instant posting, and only the posters (and the administrator) can move or peel off the stickies that have been added. Super easy with few frills to distract students.

Another neat feature is History, which highlights the ten most recent additions, allowing users to quickly see what was added since their last visit.

Check out example of students responding to Paul Laurence Dunbar's "The Sparrow" which was read in juxtaposition to Poe's "The Raven."

Applications for the Reading/Language Arts Classroom:

• Demand Exit Tickets: all students respond to an open ended question based on the day's lesson.
• Collect Ten Word Stories, ala Sparky Teaching's Ten Word Stories page.
• Ask students to list running questions about a difficult text piece.
• Encourage students to collect colorful figurative language and "cool sentences" from their reading. Some of these can later be submitted to Notable Sentences... for Imitation and Creation (see my write-up here).
• Add a "What's New and Notable" bulletin board to your teacher's page. Include assignment updates, links to current events, etc. See my Lino board at the bottom of my main class site.
• Share files and videos which are related to classroom discussion topics.
• Get instant student responses to poems, song lyrics, facts, and quotations, perhaps as a warm-up to each day's lesson.
• Allow students to record thoughts and questions as they watch a video or read a chapter.
• Check out more ideas at this blog.

Notes and Caveats:

• Limit the number of users on a single board to five or less. Otherwise, you'll have too much traffic and many redundant responses.
• If you care to know who posted which items, instruct students to include their initials on posts. My students decided to assign a different color to each student to differentiate responses.