Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Wordle in the Classroom


- Wordle - Word Cloud Creation
Critical Vocabulary seems to be the most "critical" aspect of teaching these days.  Making sure students know all the vocabulary is an important aspect for doing well on test.  Wordle would be a great way for incorporating news ways to learn and study vocabulary while letting students be creative.  The more words appear in a paragraph, the bigger they are in the Wordle
So how could you use Wordle as an instructional Tool?
  • Create Synonyms for Critical Vocabulary
  • Create a Wordle from words from a Short Story or Poem
  • Create Vocabulary from a Unit of Study
  • Create for a Quiz or Test
  • Create a list of words in a Wordle and tell students to write a story using all the words in the Wordle and see how many different stories you get
  • Create a of Wordle Famous pieces, Historical documents, or Speeches and have your kids guess what it is
  • Create a Wordle describing Characters in a story
  • Create "Who Are You" Wordle's of your students
  • Create an Introduction to a Unit
  • Create a Wordle with Song Lyrics
  • Create a Wordle Syllabus
  • Create a Wordle Wall instead of a Word Wall
Here is a Wordle of this Blog Post



Google Swirl


Interesting new way to search for images via Google. Type in a search for an image you want to view. It will then create a swirl of images that are similiar so that you can find the one with the best quality and angle. As you click on images it sorts them so that you can see the previous selections and easily go back and forth between them. No more viewing a few images of the same type on the same page at the same time. Very expansive and in a way entertaining. Give it a try.

Below is my Search for Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.  The smaller circle represent my original search.  It then expands from there.  Once you find the image you are looking for it will open the link to the homepage that image can be found on.