Technology Learning Laboratory: April 2011

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Website of the Week #15-Wordle

http://www.wordle.com/

Basics: This is a site where you make a word cloud. You enter the words you want to be in your cloud and the site will create a cloud of your words.

Examples: (Click on Picture to see Full Size)

Cactus Canyon Website Wordle

Wordle of this Blog

Declaration of Independence

You may be familiar with wordle and I have known about it for a while but, today I came across a presentation that has 51 ways to use wordle in the classroom and I thought others might want to use it. I found this on http://www.freetech4teachers.com/ and it came from a man named Tom Barrett. There are ideas for all levels and all subjects. Check it out below.

Other Word Cloud Sites:

http://www.tagxedo.com/ (can turn the cloud into a picture)

http://www.tagul.com/

http://wordlin.gs/

http://worditout.com/

Check out more about these at Free Tech 4 Teachers

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Website of the Week #14-Minute Board (embeddable forum)

http://www.minuteboard.com/

Basics: This is an web application that creates a unique forum that can be embedded into your website. Students have to create user names and passwords and then they can participate in the forum.

Example:

(Feel free to interact with this forum example. You can click on the posts to see what they say without an account or you can create an account and respond to the posts.)

Test Kitchen: I have used this with students a couple of times. It is a very easy way to create a forum and it is a very basic forum. Basically, you can create posts and people can reply to your posts. There does not seem to be an option to reply to a reply so the threads are short. It is a great venue to teach students about appropriate posting and you have complete control over what content is added to the forum. I used it as a way for students to respond to some different topics but, I don't think that I have gotten the most out of it yet.

Classroom Applications: Forums or message boards can be used in any class and any content area. It is a great place for people to share opinions and to answer questions that have unique answers.

Ideas for...

Music and Art Class-respond to different works of art
Social Studies-choose a side and support your view
Science and Math-explain a process in your own words
Language Arts-respond to a piece of literature

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Website of the Week # 13-Jeopardy Labs

http://www.jeopardylabs.com/

Basics: This is a simple way to create a jeopardy game. No login required. All you do is add the questions and answers, then they give you a link to your game. It's that simple.

Examples:

Math

Social Studies

Science

Language Arts

Test Kitchen: We used this as a way to review this past week. Jeopardy is of course a popular way to review. The best part of this site is that it is simple, free, and there is no downloading. I played with the whole class which I think is a little hard and not all of the students can participate fully. I think that when I use it again I will have them play in small groups instead of teams with the whole class. They could have all been doing this on their computers. This is also something they can do independently and it is so simple the students could even create their own board.

Additional Online Free and Simple Review Games:

http://www.superteachertools.com/

Example:

Jeopardy

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire

Board Game