Understanding Talkwall

Talkwall is a good tool to practice discourse in traditional and online classes. The teacher adds a task or a question, and the students post comments/opinions. All the contributions become visible for the participants in a shared feed, and the students or the teacher can choose to pin the contributions onto a wall, which provides different ways of sorting the contributions. The application screen can be shared with the class. This tool can be easily used on computers, tablets or mobile phones.

Every application has its privacy policies but we never tend to read them. I never read them but in this course, I was taught about the importance of reading and understanding them before using them with students. This application is developed by the University of Oslo, in collaboration with the University of Cambridge and The Research Council of Norway. This tool has GNU Affero General Public License, Version 3, 19 November 2007. Research, Innovation and Competence Development manages and coordinates the UiO’s work with decentralized competence development for school owners, school leaders and teachers. The website {https://talkwall.uio.no/#/} clearly mentioned the contact information for questions or feedback concerning their policies or how they handle your information…

• Data controller: Ole Smørdal, University of Oslo
• Data processor: EngageLab at Department of Education, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Oslo, Norway.

When you log in to this they have three options i.e. Facebook, Google or Feide, they will store your user identification and your full name from these services. They also mentioned that they store all of the Talkwalls with the contributions that are being made by the participants. In a very detailed manner, they wrote that –

• Talkwalls: We store who created the Talkwall, the co-owners, who contributed, and timestamps for creation and modifications. If participants also log in their user identification is stored.
• Contributions: The full name or nickname of the user producing the contribution, the contribution’s textual content, any links and pictures that are part of the contribution, all timestamps for creation and modifications, and metadata related to how the contribution is organized in the Talkwall. If the contributor is authenticated, user identification is also stored.

Additionally, they disclosed that they collect information such as which type of browser and device you use, your IP address and the website you came from.

How your information is used and why?

This tool saves your talkwalls and archives them so that you can open and continue whenever you want to… On the other hand, with respect to data protection, you have the right to keep your discussions private and for that, you can delete your talkwalls, also if you want to be forgotten by Talkwall.net then go to the home page and choose edit on the side of your full name and then click FORGET ME.

This tool was developed for research on the Think Together Project (a dialogue-based approach to the development of children’s thinking and learning). They also use the information to research how this tool is being used in teaching and learning. Data related to the Talkwalls created is used by them such as institutional affiliation with the person who created the Talkwall, subjects, level, number of contributions, and timestamps for creation and modifications. On top of that, they also have the option of giving consent. If we want to, we as a user can sign a consent that they can use our data for real research. This will be covered by separate agreements and requires the consent of the teachers and parents of children to be part of the data collection.

Also, they mentioned that the information about you is protected and to be able to delete it safely when it is no longer useful for our research. Lastly, they wrote “We will only store your information as long as it is necessary to provide the services you request, for the purposes described in this statement, and for any legal purposes where we are legally obliged to store this information. We will delete your information when it is no longer needed for these purposes, in accordance with the guidelines of the University of Oslo, Norway.”

Neil Mercer is an internationally acknowledged researcher who has examined the importance of oral talk for learning. In this video he explains why talk is important, and how Talkwall may support productive talk.

Source: https://talkwall.uio.no/#/