Hey guys, ever wanted to work on a project but you wanted to have pictures, document, videos, reference material etc., but you had to email it piece by piece. Have you wanted to work on a collaborative project with a couple of people or have your students learn how to work in teams, make decisions and collaborate on a project. Well your wait is over! Mural.ly is the perfect tool. Mural.ly is a big flexible canvas that allows you to collect and post anything so that you and your team can develop an idea/project. This tool has so many options and it is great to teach decision-making, taking turns and working as a team. A team can work on the mural in real-time, from different computers, in different places, making changes and posting while working together.
I have used Mural.ly with my Taylor Techies groups of 12 students and they all had a good time with the tool. They first had to pick a topic that they would enjoy collaborating on. Some of the topics were, fashion, African-American Movies, and Basketball teams. They were told to narrow down the topic and make a mural about their topic. I had developed one on dogs as an example.
One important point to note, as a teacher/counselor presenting the project, you will have to develop the murals first under your account and then get the invitation code and have your students join your murals. If you don’t do this, you have no control over the murals as you are not a group member and can’t make changes. Each student will have to develop their own account with an email (which most schools are getting with Gmail) so that they will have a profile/screen name. When you make changes or add items to the canvas there is a log kept on who made the changes. I made 5 blank canvases first and then got the invitation link and posted the link on a wiki page that the students went to. This way I didn’t have to email the link to each student. They got in their groups, chose a group number, went to the wiki and clicked on the number link and the mural.ly page showed up on their computer. Since they had joined mural.ly, they signed in and I discussed with them the dashboard commands for developing the murals. It’s a really easy to learn tool and the students were using it without trouble in minutes. It became one of their tools to use on their down time. This tool can be used to make a canvas about cyber bullying internet safety, learning emotions etc.. all while working together.
Check out one of the murals that were made by the students http://mrl.li/VaIiLc
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