Why?

I teach, therefore you learn. Or do you?



Prepare us for our future, not yours.

Read the Words

Read the Words is a TTS (Text to Speech) technology that was created to give "users alternative methods to process written information." The creators were targeting students who are stronger in auditory processing than visual. That alone could make this tool very valuable for some students.



This site could also serve as an editing tools for students. Most writers agree that hearing a piece read aloud helps to spot inconsistencies, redundancies, and awkward phrasing, among other problems. Actors have used this application to aid in memorizing parts. You could simply upload the script from any document (word, pdf, etc.) and assign a voice to the part. Once again, some people find it easier to memorize from the spoken word than the written word, and you would have the advantage of listening to what you needed to memorize any time and place you could use an MP3 player.



The voices do sound computerized, which might be off-putting for some. You can experiment with recording of up to 30 seconds for free, but two upgrades are available for very reasonable prices.

Brainstorming

Collaboration and cooperation are some of the most basic elements in 21st-century learning. Of course brainstorming is nothing new, but there are tools that allow us to share and expand on ideas in new ways that are different from one another and therefore serve different purposes.


aMaps


This site allows students to debate any given topic at any level of education. For example, preschool students could verbally express their ideas on whether dogs or cats make better pets while the teacher types them into the computer and the ideas appear on the screen. On the other hand, high school and college students could debate heavier issues in any subject: causes of given war, which candidate to vote for in an election, how to deal with global warming, whether or not stem cell research is ethical, etc. The list is literally endless. And there's always room for the devil's advocate here, too!

Another feature of this tool is that it forces users to keep their arguments concise, as space is limited to about two lines per comment. Of course students debating more complex issues might find this too limiting, but it could nevertheless be a good starting point. "aMaps" also introduces younger students what informal logic is and to what arguments, propositions, and evidence are.

Go create an aMap now!

Solvr


Here's how it works...


Simply go to Solvr and type in any debatable issue imaginable: school uniforms vs. dress code vs. no dress code; why we have certain rules in our classroom/school; why bio fuels are or are not truly helpful in improving environmental quality; whether should abolish/adopt the death sentence in our state/country, etc. One caveat: this site is open to anyone who wants to comment on your issue, so you could see some abuse. For that reason, the teacher would need to monitor the discussion closely in most cases.

Mindmeister

Extending a Sentence

An important part of any class is of course to get students to take a basic idea and expand upon it. Or conversely, it's often valuable to have students distill something down to its most basic parts. English classes naturally come to mind when you mention extending and reducing sentences, and they're clearly what you think of when you visit this site: http://www.telescopictext.com/. After all, it's getting students to take a basic block (two or three words in this case), and build upon it. Here, the sentence "I made tea" becomes a full descriptive and narrative paragraph.

But when you take Nik Peachey's suggestions for other basic sentences that are meant to spark more detail ("I went to the beach." "I saw a film." "I went to school."), you can think about applying this to other subjects. "Photosynthesis is a process." "We went to a play yesterday." "I have a dream."

Another way of using this idea would be to let students visit this site and extend the sentence that's there and then take another, already develeoped idea, in the opposite direction. Perhaps you could call it "Collapsing a Paragraph." This could be very useful in getting students to cull something down to its essence and thereby understand each of its parts more deeply.

Wordle

Word Clouds (Wordle)

Wordle is a "toy," in the words of its creator, that creates word "clouds" from content that the user supplies either by uploading it from a text or by typing it in. Words that appear more frequently in the source text appear more prominently in the final product. You can play around with your clouds by experimenting with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. You can use your word cloud in any way you wish-- it's yours! It can be printed out or saved to the Wordle gallery to share with your others. http://www.wordle.net/

Brenda Dyck, author of "Brenda's Blog" on Education World, recently created a post dedicated to wordle. Here's the link: http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/columnists/dyck/dyck030.shtml. If you scroll down on this page, you'll several links offering various uses for Wordle in the classroom.

Another blog that I've found to be very useful is Jose Picardo's "Box of Tricks." Jose is a teacher of upper-level modern languages in Nottingham, England.
http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=103

The Polliwog Journal (English teaching and technology blog) has an entry about using Wordle as a prereading strategy.

And finally, http://thecleversheep.blogspot.com/ offers a list of 20 uses for wordle. Once you read the comments on these blogs, you'll see that 20 uses for Wordle is just the beginning!

NOTE: If you have trouble getting your word cloud to load, try using Wordle on Mozilla FireFox. Wordle is based on JAVA and users sometimes have trouble getting this application on Internet Explorer. If you don't have a Mozilla icon on your tool bar, do the following:

1. Go to the "Start" button on the lower left-hand side of your screen and click on it.
2. At the top of the menu that appears, you'll see a search option. Start typing "Mozilla" in that search bar.
3. When "Mozilla FireFox" appears, click that. Don't start it in the "Safe Mode" option that will also appear.
4. Once the Mozilla browser in opened, just go to http://www.wordle.net/ and start playing with your word cloud!

During today's class, we will create a word cloud and view several sites that offer ideas. Here are just a few of the literally hundreds of ideas teachers have written about. Any new ideas generated in today's class will be added in so that you can return to this page and use them throughout the year.

1. One of the most basic applications for Wordle is for elementary students to type in their spelling and/or vocabulary words. They can repeat the most challenging words several times for extra practice and of course see those words appear more prominently in the final product.

2. Here's a math application from Brenda Dyck's blog:

“I can use this with my fifth graders to create a word cloud for math vocabulary we encounter every day. The list could be added to every day, and then uploaded every Friday to see which words/concepts we use the most. We could do that at the end of a chapter, subject, grading period or school year. I think the tool would help students see which concepts are most important, or at least most important based on our curriculum."~ Rodney Turner

3. Here's an idea from an art teacher:

“We went on an excursion to see the art at the National Gallery of Victoria. Have a look at our word cloud. Classes brainstormed a list of words that sprang to mind after the excursion, and then voted on the ones we felt were most significant. The more popular the vote, the bigger the word appears."~ Tania Hunt

4. Jose Picardo's idea was for a high school Spanish class that could be applied to any class the uses any kind of article or longer text. Jose happened to use a newspaper article, but you could use any kind of longer text: book excerpts, encyclopedia article, blogs, etc. Here's Jose's idea:

"I thought I’d use it with my sixth form (16-17 year olds) and then report on it. This was my lesson preparation:

1. I chose two online newspaper articles about the current topic we are studying: the environment.
2. I copied and pasted the articles into Wordle, creating two word clouds.
3. I created two word documents with the full articles and made enough copies.
4. I also printed both word clouds on one piece of A4 paper and made enough copies.

• This is how the lesson went:

1. I handed out the hard copies of the word clouds to pupils and asked them to fold their papers in half so every other pupil would be looking at a different word cloud.
2. Pupils were asked to look at the word clouds, with a dictionary, and try to ascertain the gist of the original articles.
3. Half the class then explained to the other half what they thought their article was about while I displayed each word cloud in turn on the interactive whiteboard (see illustrations), highlighting words one at a time and extracting relevant / useful vocabulary.
4. I then handed out copies of the original articles in full to my pupils and discussed the vocabulary further.

Here's a comment on Jose's blog from Sandy, an English teacher, describing how she used Wordle to teach poetry:

I only discovered Wordle yesterday and immediately appreciate how this can be a tool to analyze poetry. I copied and pasted one passage from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. The first time I did, I saw that Wordle left out articles, prepositions - or what are deemed insignificant words to analyze. After reading how Wordle chooses to increase font size and how to put words into groups, I re-copied the passage and made a few changes.
I used the tilde to hold together the phrase “after the” which would have been left out otherwise. And since this is repeated in the stanza, it increased in font size. The word “worth” was repeated so it increased in size. The result was exactly what I wanted: the emphasis on Prufrock’s inability to act because he wasn’t sure he could be successful.
What a great tool to help visualize meaning and intent.

Finally, just in case you forget how to create a word cloud, here are some very clear instructions provided by Nik Peachey: http://www.technogogy.org.uk/wordle/wordle.htm