Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Words, Words, Words



Wordle has been one of my favorite tools for a while. With Wordle, you can create word clouds (like the one posted above). You type in a list of word (or copy and past a story, a blog post, an article ...). The size of the word in the wordle image depends on how many times that word was used. You do have options to change colors, backgrounds, fonts, and direction of some words in Wordle. Tagul is a similar word cloud creator, but you can create certain shapes with it.

I like the variety of things that I can do with Wordle and how it can be used in the classroom. I came across a wiki that presented even more ideas: MoreThanWordles. This page by Jen Wagner (twitter @jenwagner) is a collection of resources (and just neat things) that can be done with word clouds whether they are created using the Wordle program or not. I really like the jigsaw puzzle image that is over a wordle so pieces can be removed one at a time. The presentation on adding graphics that can be found on that wiki gives me even more ideas for ways a teacher (or really anybody) can use Wordle or word clouds.

She also does the daily GuessTheWordle daily challenge where a wordle is posted and students have to figure out what the words all have in common. You can read more about this challenge as well as find examples and answers from the past on the GuessTheWordle Wiki.

Here are some other great resources related to word clouds and Wordle:

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Quick & Easy Webpages for your site.

As a new teacher in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools you are required to maintain a webpage. Are you struggling to figure out what to put on your site?

Here is a quick idea that can add a number of additional pages to your site very quickly and can be easily maintained with little effort.

As a teacher you follow the NC Standard Course of Study which outlines the information that you will teach through out the school year. Those of you who are in Elementary Schools teach your students all year long while those of you who are in Middle and High Schools may teach multiple subjects, by quarter, semester or other. The information that you share with your students does not change unless the SCOS changes... correct? As a Middle/High school teacher you may be providing students with a Syllabus to outline the course in paper format, while Elementary school teachers you may be relaying information as needed to your students and parents.

Why not create webpages designed for each subject(Middle/High) or by quarter(Elementary) that you create all at once and then hide/unhide when you change classes, quarters or semesters?

Elementary Teachers:
You teach the same information to your students according to the SCOS by quarter. Now unless the SCOS changes you would not really have to change or modify your webpage except to change the start and end dates of the quarter and the year information. Normally you outline the semester activities, lessons and projects on a sheet that may be in your classroom or you may send home to parents with their children which you hope gets to them. Why not create a separate webpage for each quarter and make it active/inactive as needed.

Middle/High Teachers:
You teach multiple subjects across the entire year, or by semester or even quarter. Again unless the SCOS changes the information you provide to your students would not need modification. Your students may expect that you provide them with a paper syllabus, or some sort of outline for the class that they will follow through out the year. Why not create a separate webpage for each subject area or class that you teach and make it active/inactive as needed.

So how do you do this? After you have been given access to your Schoolwires webpage at your school you will be able to go into the Site Manager page and click on the New Page button. This will show you the 8 different pages that are available to you within the Schoolwires webpage system. The easiest page to choose is the FLEX page which offers you the easiest method of getting information to your students and parents.
Once you have clicked on the Flex page give it a title that corresponds to the information you are going to put on the page, ie; 1st Quarter, 2nd Semester English, Algebra I, US History, 3rd Quarter for 5th Graders. Then Save the page so that you can begin adding the information to the page.

Once you have completed all the information for each page and created each page according to your needs now you can make them either Active or Inactive. How do you do this you may ask? Here is a quick lesson followed by a short video to demo the action you would take within your Site Manager.

While on your Site Manager home page. Under the heading Current Pages there is a series of columns. The one to the farthest left shows the Status of each page. By default each page is set to Active but there is a small check box to the left of the word Active. If you UN-Check one of those boxes it will place the corresponding page in an In-Active mode thus making it invisible for students, parents and community members when they are looking at your site. As an example, if you are an Elementary school teacher with webpages for each quarter that outline the SCOS for students and parents as the end of October approaches over that final weekend you would go into your Site Manager and Un-Check the 1st Quarter webpage and Check the 2nd Quarter webpage to make it viewable.

Here is the demo video:

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Butter Up Your Lessons With Timetoast

Once in a while I come across programs or websites that can completely change the way we teach. And I do believe I have found this with Timetoast. Do you have students create timelines? Creating timelines can be a time consuming, and, let's face it, boring. Not with Timetoast.

Timetoast is an online, interactive, timeline program. Using a free account students and teachers can create a wide range of interactive timelines. In the example below a student has created a timeline of the NASA Space program. Each dot represents information entered by the student. When you move across the time line you see the event that corresponds to that date. Cool Huh? But timetoast takes it one step further allowing users to link events on their timeline to other websities like videos, interviews, or pictures. Now that is cool!

Another great feature is that once you create your timeline you can share it with others with a simple web address. So students can share with other students and teachers can share also. There is not a feature yet to make timelines private but that is coming. In the mean time check out Timetoast and timeline to your heart's content!

Timetoast

Here are some other timeline creators too:

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Lots of Resources for Searching


I recently found this EduGlogster and thought it would be a great resource to share with both teachers and students. Have fun exploring!
(Hint: When you mouse over the poster above, each time you see a pink circle, that is a link to that site).
Poster from School Library Journal

Thursday, September 16, 2010

#ntchat

I think one of the neat things on twitter is #edchat and all the topic specific chat that have created t go along with it. Many wonderful resources for teachers are shared on twitter using these hashtags (# followed by a word or group of letters). There is a chat specifically for new teachers (#ntchat). I am not a new teacher and love all the resources and idea being shared using that hashtag. I added a box to the sidebar of this blog to show the many tweets with the #ntchat hashtag (thanks @web20classroom for your help with that project ... that is Steven Anderson who just joined our department).
There will soon be some online Twitter for Teacher classes offered in our county. You can also find a list of the various specific chats (like #ellchat, #engchat, #scichat, #gtchat ....) at this page by T @cybraryman1 "My Ed Chats page" http://bit.ly/7w7P59 He also shares great resources and lists.
*by the way, our school system has a hashtag also (#wsfcs)

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Bloom's Taxonomy and Technology

In her Blog, iLearnTechnology, Kelly Tenkely has recently posted some great poster examples of how Bloom's Taxonomy can be shared visually. Each of the links below has 2 "posters" on the page. One of the posters has the categories and verbs that go along with that group. The other "poster" on each page includes the categories and verbs that go along with it but the technology tools available to assist students reach the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. I thought these are wonderful and I wanted to share them with you!

Saturday, September 4, 2010

What would your Wordle look like?

I wrote on reflection responding to some questions on Teacher Leadership, then I copied and pasting that whole reflection in Wordle to create a word cloud image. From this word cloud, clearly knowledge, technology, team, teacher, learning, and classroom were prevalent in my reflection. If you wrote a reflection on teacher leadership, what do you think that Wordle would look like? If students created word clouds using something they have written, what information could that tell you?

I have written about Wordle and various word cloud creators before, but I thought I would share some of the highlights again.


Here are some other great resources related to word clouds and Wordle: