Thing #14: Discovering Web 2.0 Tools

With five days left to wrap up the rest of the 23 Things that I have not completed, I decided to check out wordle at http://wordle.net/ .

I first experienced wordle this summer when I was taking the New Jersey Writing Workshop. We were asked as a class to design a cover for our class book that was going to be printed. I was so blown away that all you had to do was type words into the computer and it would create graphical "word clouds" that you could customize layouts, fonts, and colors. I just knew that my students would love creating their own word cloud based on their own interests and personalities, that my students would call this "pure genius" and love me the entire school year. In the past, I have asked my students to create a poster "about themselves" to bring to class the second week of school. This year, I decided that I would have the students creat graphical "word clouds" using their name and adjectives that would describe them as well as inserting words that go along with their interests.

The assignment was a hit and my students loved creating their own "word cloud." I asked the students to come up with their own way of how they wanted to display their "word cloud" and we would put them up in the room. It was really cool to see which students would be as creative as possible and which ones would do enough just to get the project done. I did ask the students later if they had to choose doing a poster or creating their own word cloud, which one would they rather do. The majority of the students said that they enjoyed creating the word cloud and that they would probably keep it rather than having to hold onto a poster.

I did investigate http://www.toondoo.com/ and created a cute little cartoon, but was getting frustrated because I could not insert it into my blog, that I got frustrated and decided to write about wordle. I did have fun creating my character, background, text cloud, and any additional props. I was just spending way too much time creating my toon when I should be wrapping up this portion of the assignment.

Being and English teacher, I chose a wordle that was already created on the site entitled Project G by Meredith. Later when I have more time, I plan on creating a wordle based on adjectives that describe me and my interests to put up with my students creations. You can use this website to creat wordles just about anything. I would think that extrememly shy students would enjoy this assignment as opposed to creating a poster about themselves. Especially if they don't like their picture being taken.

I also plan on looking at several of the other tools listed in this lesson to see what they are all about. Right now, I am on dealing with "thing overload", and have had enough "things" to deal with tonight.