Tech Tips Tuesday

This Week's Tip: Collaborate and Share Ideas

Tom Barrett has been putting together collaborative slide shows that are built up of the tools teachers are using in their classrooms, and their tips on how to use them effectively. There are some fantastic suggestions offered, so be sure to check them out. And if you have tried something that hasn't been mentioned, email the details on to Tom so that he can include your suggestions too.

Interesting Ways to use Wordle in The Classroom
Interesting Ways to use your Interactive Whiteboard
Interesting Ways to use Google Earth in The Classroom
Interesting Ways to use Google Docs in The Classroom
Interesting Ways to use Pocket Videos in The Classroom
Interesting Ways to use Twitter in The Classroom

Enjoy!

Literacy Unit - Rowan of Rin #5

We are working through the book Rowan of Rin by Emily Rodda. Last week we read chapters 9 and 10 and focused on our perceptions of fear. For an overview of activities in earlier chapters please use these links:
Chapters 1 and 2
Chapters 3 and 4
Chapters 5 and 6
Chapters 7 and 8

Summary - Chapters 9 and 10
Rowan begins to realise that the people in the traveling party do actually care about him and can be trusted. Together they relax around the fire while they eat - chatting and joking. Rowan thinks of home and the members of their group who should be arriving home at this time. He thinks of his mother, his sister and the bukshah. Another rhyme appears on the map to give them some advice for the journey ahead. The party begins to despair when they see a steep cliff ahead of them - blocking their way. Marlie encourages everyone to go on and they are pleased, on arrival, to find a cave in the wall of rock. They are greeted by the terrifying shrieks of bats flying at their heads. Boldly they continue after the attacks have subsided. As they continue onwards and upwards they see the rhyme coming into play before their eyes. Unfortunately, they come to a body of water that they must swim through in order to go on. Allun, having not grown up in Rin, was not taught to swim and must stay behind at this point. The other three brave the cold water and continue their journey. The party now consists of Rowan, Marlie and Strong Jonn.


Activities

Code Breaker:

• Students find and practise reading descriptive passages fluently.

Text Participant:

• Students determine interview questions and answers about the events of chapters 9 and 10, then create videos of character responses to these questions.

Text User:

• Students consider the role of adjectives in creating a description and write a descriptive piece about a season or a photograph.

Text Analyst:

• Students reflect on the fears of characters in the book.
• Students have 5 minutes to brainstorm a list of fears/phobias.
• Students write a paragraph about one of their fears including the reason for it and the way they deal with it.
• Use students' lists to create a class word cloud of fears with Wordle.
• Discuss when fear is good/bad and how it can be used to your advantage.
  

Here is the word cloud that we created with Wordle. You can also see it by clicking here.

Here is the complete Rowan of Rin unit.

Tech Tips Tuesday

What in the World is Wordle?

It's free, online, and useful for helping students to identify the main ideas in a text and what has been omitted. It creates beautiful word clouds that act in some ways like a graph - a visual representation of information.

"Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends." (quote taken from wordle.net)

This week I used Wordle after a class brainstorm on our ideal classroom, ideal teacher and ideal classmate. Students wrote their thoughts on post-it notes. I took these and typed the text into Wordle. Wordle then generated a word cloud that I could print out and display on the wall as a reminder for students about what they thought. It was interesting to see how highly 'sport' and 'computers' featured in these word clouds.

I'm planning to use a scanner to scan in newspaper articles during our unit on newspapers. I'll grab the text, pop it into Wordle and use it to help teach students about visually scanning a text and determining main ideas.

Here are some more ideas that you might find useful:

Speeches of US presidents have been transformed into word clouds. This information gives a visual representation of issues that were pertinent at the time of the speech.

This Wordle was made using the text from the apology speech of the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd on 13 February 2009.


A number of teachers have been putting together ways to use Wordle in the classroom. You can find Tina Coffey's great ideas at Teaching with Technology. Tom Woodward at Bionic Teaching shares some great ideas for Looking at Poetry through Wordle.

This last one's just for fun - No prizes for guessing what I Wordled.