Edit: I love the idea of the fakewall. However, there is advertising on the site and it is very bulky to work with. So I have researched better options. Lucky for all of us, there are people out there that see the same shortcomings in the fakewall site and they have improved the usability by creating...FAKEBOOK!!
Here's what I like about Fakebook:
No ads (yay!)
when you enter a name, the site goes out to the WorldWideWeb and finds pictures for you! I think as teachers we have to take a look at the technology/tools we are using and make sure they are not impeding the educational objective of the assignment. Fakebook is such a user friendly site you can use it to get the details down (i.e., conversations, relationships, etc.) but you are not bogged down with the finer details (saving pictures to upload, etc.).
If you link back to the originating site (classtools) you will also find some other cool stuff. But I'm saving that for another day.
End Edit
There has been quite a bit of a buzz about the following site. I've been wanting to have students make a facebook page for a historical person for quite awhile now. The only thing holding me back was the lack of a site that would make it easier...enter My Fake Wall!
I had a Google doc template that would've done the job. With some tweaking. Major tweaking. With this site, however, students can just plug in the information and shazam! There's the wall. In case you just want to do something different, there are also some already made, such as this one for Ben Franklin.
Pros: um...free & easy! Also, you really have to know quite a bit about a person and the events they are associated with in order to write a fakebook wall. I also see this as being relevant and interesting to students. This would also be fun for book characters, IMHO.
Cons: You have to create an account, and in order to do so you have to have an email. I honestly don't think that's a problem for most students today, but I don't feel comfortable making it a required activity because of this factor. Not really a con in the sense I will just have a choice of assignments that will all meet the goals I have for this assignment...but still kind of a bummer.
So here is my practice wall...made in honor of my kitty, Mozilla (and just for the record, if I were to get another it's name would be the vastly superior Chrome...just sayin').
http://www.myfakewall.com/
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