Have You Ever Heard of Wiggio?

          I have not heard of Wiggio before taking IT 648 Telecommunication in Education class. Wiggio slogan is “Wiggio.com is a free, online toolkit that makes it easy to work in groups”.  According Wiggio.com, Wiggio is a result of Two Cornell graduate who were frustrated from trying to communicate, collaborate, and complete group project. They came up with the Wiggio idea and were able to secure some funding for project in August 2008. The Wiggio team designed Wiggio to be a web application that is super easy to use, very straightforward for its users, and effective for every type of group applications.  

          Even though Wiggio offers variety of applications such as group calendar, poll, conference calls, and chat online, in IT 648 class, we use Wiggio mainly for class communication and summiting our assignments by posting links to the board. Wiggio acts as our class listserve by emailing us our group activity when someone posted something on the board. 

          I found that Wiggio is easy to use and very straightforward, which Wiggio fulfills its claim. However, I sometimes frustrated when I can’t reply to certain comment on the post. I think it is inconvenience and not very effective use of the application. Dr. Yuen’s required us to create our Wiggio group for class assignment. I learned that you can’t create a poll for your group unless you have your group members listed. I found it a little bit inconvenience that I can’t prepare my Wiggio group before inviting people to be a group member. In addition, I was frustrated when I can’t stop Wiggio to email every activity I did in my group though I selected “Do not SEND notification.” These are the disadvantages of Wiggio I found. However, I believe that the benefits of Wiggio outweigh its drawbacks. Therefore, I will recommend Wiggio to others if they ask my opinion about Web 2.0 application for group or organization management and communication. 

          Since my Wiggio group is a private, here is its brief information. 

Wiggio Group Name: Thai Cooking

Group Description: Thai Cooking is a group for lovers of Thai food.

Group Web Address: http://thaicooking.wiggio.com   

Group Member: 12 people (So far)

Our Goal: To create a virtual Thai Cookbook

Wiggio Tools Used in Thai Cooking Group:

• Sharing and editing files on Thai Recipes,
• Polling group opinion on their favorite Thai dish,
• Sending email and mass text,
• Creating a to-do-list for creating a virtual Thai Cookbook, and
• Creating 2 events: Thai Cooking Day and Thai Food Day

          In conclusion, Wiggio is a good Web 2.0 application for group management and communication. Wiggio lives up to its claim as “easy to work in groups”. I plan to introduce Wiggio for my students so they can use it when working in group project. Also, I plan to assign my students to  Wiggio as a mean to communication and manage for their service-learning project.