More with Wiggio

I already laid out the basics of Wiggio, but now it's time to look at what a group of your students could do with this tool.

First of all, Heather commented on my first Wiggio post and said that she probably wouldn't use it with students. Since Heather teaches middle school, I completely understand and agree with that choice. It's probably not the best tool for younger students.

However, I teach high school juniors and seniors who will soon be off to college. They will have to complete group projects while coordinating with other students who may have very different schedules. I think that using a tool like this while they near the end of high school could be an opportunity to learn some invaluable skills for the future. So while I do not recommend using Wiggio with middle school (or maybe even high school freshmen or sophomores), I believe it would be very successful with older high school students.

Having said that, let's say you want your students to complete a group project that will involve extensive work outside of class and assembling multiple file components for the final product. You can create a group on Wiggio for each student group:

By creating the groups yourself, you will therefore be a member of each group. Even more importantly, you'll be the administrator and can therefore manage all of the settings for the students in the group:

You'll then add students to the group by sending them an invite via email:

Students will then be able to join the group and have access to the group folder. From there, they can start using the features you granted permission for, such as creating a document:

A note about the document interface: unlike on Google docs, the work does not save unless you hit the save button. Students would need to remember to save their work like they do when working in Microsoft Word.

Throughout the project, students can schedule their meetings (in person and virtual), hold conference calls or video conferences, store all of their files, create documents, send messages to group members, and manage the tasks on their to-do list. And as the administrator of the group, you'll be in the loop about the students' planning and progress from beginning to end.

To my fellow high school teachers, I hope you are intrigued enough to check out this very versatile tool!

If you have more questions about Wiggio, try checking their FAQ page or Knowledge Base.