According to the Urban Dictionary http://www.urbandictionary.com/ this means:
To tell someone to shut up or stop talking
“I’m sick of hearing you talk, put a cork in it”
I am certainly not telling anyone to shut up, quite the opposite really, I want to talk about a really fantastic free (they are the best) Web 2.0 tool called Corkboard: http://www.corkboard.me
So what is Corkboard?
It is basically similar to Wallwisher and other online sticky notes websites (there are many). What I like about this though is that you there is no need to log in or sign up – so it is so quick to start to use it, sometimes creating accounts and putting in your personal information can take time especially if you then have to activate your account via email too.
It is so easy to use – you just literally click on the website or type in the URL as you go on the website it automatically creates a brand new URL for you to instantly start using and creating a new cork board – if you share this URL with your class then the everyone can begin adding their own sticky notes on the shared cork board. It also automatically saves the page so you can keep coming back to it. This is a great way to get a class collaborating at the beginning of a topic or at the end of the lesson to see what they have learnt.
Here is one I made earlier about going back to school – http://corkboard.me/1bnZLx4ONw feel free to add your own to it, in fact would be interesting to see what was written on this in a weeks time.
There are potential downsides to this in the classroom such as others deleting others work or potentially writing something rude and not being able to work out who did it, but think it is worth a try.
It could also be used for teachers to collaborate and for professional development too. We actually used this to collaborate in groups at Microsoft’s Partners in Learning Institute in Seattle over the summer – you can see my blog post about cork board here: http://bit.ly/q7uCrB In fact that is where I first saw Corkboard thanks to Sonja Delafosse a fantastic teacher from Seattle – you can follow her on twitter @sdelafosse.
Have you used Corkboard before? Have you got any ideas on how you could use it?