- Ah, technology. Love it and hate it. It was interesting to see how many computers and browsers I had to try before either Tagzido or Wordle would work. Both need plugins that our school network policies wouldn't let me download. It wouldn't work at all on a Chromebook, didn't like the operating system. I finally ended up using Firefox on my old desktop and made a great Lions Tagzido (the animal lions, my first graders are researching lions.) I would like some of my students to create word clouds as we research, but I will need to address this issue first with our tech department.
108 Ways to use Word Clouds
- As I mentioned, I want to start by having all my grade levels create clouds as they research. I want them to see what words are most frequent. It might help with their summarizing of information as they read. This is always one of the harder writing styles to teach.
- I want to put a few of my lesson plan into a cloud and show the kids. Perhaps use it to get them to start thinking about up and coming lesson topics so they have seen the words before. I tried this with World Book and Wikipedia and was pretty pleased with the word frequencies. If I post it on my website, I can have them self direct some of the discussion for both group and class.
- I am teaching the constitution at 4th grade. I want to have groups create word clouds of the terms and concepts as a final review/measure of understanding.
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Easel.ly My students came to see me at an open mike the other night. They know me as the music and the technology guy. I have a guitar in both my classrooms and play a lot while they are working. I enjoyed making this "One For The Road" info-graphic with some of my favorite songs and groups. Easel.ly is easy to use. I can see a number of uses for it. My older students could make a collage for a number of different lessons. |
I made this cool horse word cloud at Tagzedo. I also have it at the bottom of my home page that I am calling the face of my classroom. Wikstrom.Weebly.com |