How Can Teachers Use It?
The most interesting way to use PrimaryWall is to collaborate with other classrooms. You can connect with anyone, from other classes in your district to those in faraway places. Teachers covering similar units can connect students for collaborative discussion forums. Kids could take turns composing a story or poem together. They could post and answer discussion questions about a book. Everyone doing the same science experiment can collaborate. Teachers could ask kids to brainstorm lists, such as parts of the human body, multiples of four, or parts of speech, and the results would be easy to organize and share. Alternately, students could contribute in small groups and later discuss their submissions as a class.
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What's It Like?
Editor's Note: PrimaryWall has closed and is no longer available.
PrimaryWall is an open source tool that allows users to communicate in real-time. Teachers and students can create “walls” where they post notes. Notes then appear on the screens of others who are linked to that wall. Anyone on the wall can edit, sort, or search existing notes, plus they can add their own. The free version includes community support and an unlimited number of walls that can be saved for 30 days. In the premium version, walls can be saved longer and be password-protected, photos and clickable links can be added, profanity can be filtered out, and wall designs can be personalized.
Strong points are PrimaryWall's ease of use when designing and sharing, and when operating the security features. Changing the wall background can be fun, and while some choices are interesting, others seem odd and irrelevant. Share your wall by sending out the provided link. In the premium version, walls can be shared with everyone or be password-protected.
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Is It Good For Learning?
PrimaryWall is so simple (write short notes, share them, you're done) that its learning potential depends a lot on what users contribute and whether they take advantage of the site’s capabilities. Unfortunately, beyond giving a short list of suggestions for classroom use, the site itself is of little help. There's no mention of why sticky notes on a computer are better than an old-fashioned class discussion.
The most promising application for PrimaryWall would perhaps be an exchange among classrooms from different parts of the country, or even the world. Interacting in a real-time forum with kids from different classrooms and different backgrounds can be very beneficial. Ideas here are bound to be relatively superficial, though, as sticky notes require short thoughts.
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Post your notes, with title, text, and author, on the “wall.”
Only a few ideas are given for utility in the classroom.
Backgrounds and fonts can be personalized, as seen in this example exchange between a student and teacher.
Easily share your wall with others by copying the link.
In the premium version, choose who can access the wall.
