PinDax is a new web tool that lets you “pin” virtual “Post It” notes on a virtual bulletin board.
It’s very, very similar to a tool I like a lot called Wallwisher. I have to admit that I didn’t spend a whole lot of time looking around PinDax, but my quick impressions was that it has a lot more “bells and whistles” than Wallwisher. That additional complexity (and I have to admit, it doesn’t seem that much more complex — it just seems to have a lot more options) doesn’t necessarily make it more attractive for classroom use.
Let me know if I’m missing something, though.
I’m going to take this opportunity to reprint my review of Wallwisher. My description of how to use it would be the same for PinDax:
Wallwisher appears to me to be one of the most useful Web 2.0 sites I’ve found in awhile. It can be a great place for students to use higher-order thinking by creating categories of images (and descriptions) or short texts they copy and paste (or write themselves). It can also be used as a site for social bookmarking of websites if you just right-click the website you put inside the sticky-note and then click on “open in a new window.”
I’ve explained in The Best Social Bookmarking Applications For English Language Learners & Other Students more details on how a site like Wallwisher can be used by English Language Learners for categorization and website bookmarking applications, and I’d encourage you to take a look. The other sites listed there can be used for similar purposes, but Wallwisher appears to be the easiest and most user friendly of the bunch.
PinDax is *clearly* superior to Wallwisher as it takes collaboration much more seriously – you are right about the bells and whistles, but they do not really get in students’ way of getting something done. Feed integration, board embedding, the rich administration options (actually you can switch on or off single options that you may have found overwhelming for young learners) and an exemplary access management (you decide if your board can be found; a password is enough to grant editing access…) are many convincing points that Wallwisher just does not offer. – I was disgusted by the handwritten font and the somewhat strange color set of the demo board, but even this (fonts and colors!) can be tweaked to your liking in the admin area… Wallwisher was yesterday, PinDax is today. – I hope I can write up a more elaborate test in the next few days (and focus on the collaborative functionality and its potential for classroom usage)… – Best regards from Germany, you’re still my star blogger No. 1!-)