Web 2.0 Tool Review: Twiddla!

Name: Twiddla

URL: http://www.twiddla.com/

Category: Collaboration Tool

Description:

Twiddla is a Web 2.0 tool that takes the basic chatroom concept and expands it by allowing not only instant text messaging, but also real time graphics drawing on a canvas shared by all participants.  Marking on the whiteboard is similar to marking in other basic art software such as Microsoft Paint.  For example, you can draw freehand, draw straight lines, and create geometric shapes of various dimensions.  You can also insert images or text.  The individual items you create (e.g. line doodles, shapes, text, jpeg images) can each be selected and moved around the whiteboard, rescaled, or deleted.  Graph lines can be switched on or off in the background of the whiteboard.

A versatile feature of Twiddla is that it allows you to draw on a variety of canvas backgrounds besides the plain whiteboard.  Possible canvases include webpages, images or documents in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or PDF format.  You can’t edit the documents or images within Twiddla, but you can mark them up as much as you want.  Twiddla also includes a background called Etherpad that is a notepad where you can edit the text (unlike an imported Word document), while also marking it up like any of the other backgrounds.  It is possible to navigate the web using a Twiddla webpage background, but doing so clears any markings when you navigate away from your current page.

Unlike a graphics program like Paint, Twiddla does not save your work or any images you make on the board once a meeting has ended.  You must save screenshots to have a record of your work.

What do you need to know before using this tool? One of Twiddla selling points is that requires virtually no prior knowledge to use.  Marking up the whiteboard is very similar to marking up images using basic graphics programs like Microsoft Paint, and the chat feature is self-explanatory.  There are some extra features that were not self-explanatory to me, but the main functions of the tool are easy to learn.

What do you need to have before using this tool? Besides being simple to use, another user-friendly feature of Twiddla is that it only requires a computer with an internet connection and a web browser.

How do you use this tool? 

    1) Navigate to http://www.twiddla.com/

2) Click on “Start a new meeting.”

3) To add other participants to the session, contact them and instruct them to navigate to your current URL.  You could cut and paste the URL into an instant message or email.

Some ways to use Twiddla for teaching:

1)   When holding in person office hours is not possible, Twiddla would be excellent for holding online office hours.  Online tutoring typically uses shared whiteboards, and helping students during office hours is very similar to tutoring.  Tutors generally have to provide help without advance preparation, and Twiddla is excellent for quick, impromptu interaction using both words and drawings.  The student’s access to the whiteboard would make it easier for the teacher to lead the student into finding his own answers.  To set up online office hours, a teacher could communicate the time and the URL to his students, then wait for them to navigate to the Twiddla session during the scheduled time period.

2)   Another scenario where Twiddla would be useful would be in instructing students on how to use a particular website, for example their course's website.  The instructor could lead the students webpage by webpage within Twiddla, using the drawing tools to point out the important buttons, links and other features.  The drawings would disappear when navigating away from each page, but if the markings are just simple pointers and highlights, this shouldn’t be a major drawback.  I don’t know of any other way to make marks on active webpages other that by using Twiddla.  Thus, this particular use would probably be equally helpful in a face to face setting where the teacher’s screen was projected for the students to see, without using the online collaboration aspect of Twiddla.  (In the example below, the highlighting circle and arrow were created using Twiddla.)

3) A teacher could give an effective live online presentation using Twiddla.  Twiddla sessions cannot be saved and reloaded like a PowerPoint presentation.  However, an instructor could save a set of image files in a folder, and upload each of them to Twiddla before giving the presentation.  Besides drawings and photos, the images could be snippets of text or mathematical functions.  Ideally, these would be PNG files with a transparent background to avoid obscuring the view of other images on the whiteboard.  The Etherpad background could be used to allow the teacher to make impromptu notes.  This would probably be best combined with an audio feature so that the teacher can speak while manipulating the images for the lecture.  Twiddla does include voice channels, but they were all everytime I clicked for them.
    A lecture given in this way would be more dynamic than a slide presentation.  It would give the lecturer the power to move and interact the images on his board in different ways.  It would also give him the opportunity to ask a student to complete a figure using the elements on the whiteboard.  For example, in a lecture on Mendelian genetics, the instructor could create an image of a Punnett square, and PNG images of genotypes.  The teacher could invite students to move the correct genotypes into the correct boxes.  Alternatively, the students could use the text writing whiteboard tool to fill in the boxes.

What are the advantages of using this tool in a teaching environment?  One aspect of Twiddla that is conducive to progressive learning methods is that it allows all users to easily mark on the whiteboard.  In an in-person classroom, it is usually only the instructor that marks on the whiteboard.  This practice probably has less to do with teaching philosophy and more to do with the logistical difficulties of multiple students moving around the classroom and standing in front of the whiteboard to mark on it.  Twiddla would encourage active learning by making use of the whiteboard equally available to teacher and student alike.

    What are the disadvantages of using this tool in a teaching environment?    The ability of students to manipulate the whiteboard would present both advantages and disadvantages.  A single student could cause problems, either maliciously or unintentionally.  However, there is an undo button that would help with this.  A related point is that there is probably a limit to how many people can collaborate on whiteboard before it becomes unwieldy.  If Twiddla was used to teach a class of perhaps twenty or more students, the teacher might have to carefully coordinate the timing of who marks on the board.  Otherwise there the whiteboard might end up a mess of markings on top of markings.

    I did find that some of the tools in Twiddla did not work correctly.  Importing documents only worked for me when I used the bottom button, but not the top button.  This was frustrating until I figured it out.  Also Twiddla's screen capture function did not work for me (the image file never finished loading).  However, I could use my computer's screen capture function to get the same result.