Infographics

In an earlier post, I mentioned students creating infographics.  In case that's an unfamiliar term, or you're not sure what students might do with infographics, here are some wonderful examples from Stan & Emily's sophomores.  They were charged with creating infographics about the impact of cotton on the early US.  Caitlin's is shown below and here are some more.

Using a blog to prompt student discussion

For his wellness classes, Troy created a blog with links to articles about recent events that he wants his students to discuss.  Students post comments anonymously.  Take a look:

http://troysnewsofnote.blogspot.com/

I was in the room as students were reading and reacting to some of these articles and the engagement was high. 

Having students create and update their own blogs is also a powerful way to make writing meaningful for them.  Teachers whose students blog report improvement in both their writing and their engagement.

There are many tools available for blogging.  Probably the easiest to get started with is Blogger (or Blogspot), which is part of Google Apps for Education (this is what Troy used).  You can find Blogger by clicking "More" while in gMail. 

Here are a few articles if you'd like to read some more:

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/blogging-in-21st-century-classroom-michelle-lampinen

http://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/3721

2nd semester tech boost

It's a new semester, and a chance to try something new with technology. Here are 10 simple things you can do right now! In a 10-minute meeting, we can get any of these ideas started:

1. Have students post their reactions to a reading/video on a Moodle forum....
2. ...or use a VoiceThread to get students’ reaction to a picture, video, or story.
3. Have students start a blog to write reflections on what they’re studying (go to GMail, More, Even More, Blogger).
4. ...or for a different approach to writing, have students create a comic strip summary of the day’s lesson.
5. Have your students record themselves speaking/reading, using Audacity or Aviary.
6. Create a Google alert to send you the latest results on any search query.
7. Start a parent e-mail list (see me to set this up- it only takes a few minutes!).
8. Create a YouTube playlist (or have students create them) for extending classroom learning.
9. Create a database or glossary in Moodle that all students can contribute to (see me to set this up).
10. Create a Google form (in Google Docs) to get input from students.

Why not give one of these a try? I'd love to help you get started.

(originally posted 3/10/12)

Using Google Docs for letters of intent (and more!)

Here are some tips for using Google Docs (note- the first two tips also apply to Microsoft Word- with some differences, but are easier to do in Google Docs):

1. Comments in Letters of Intent (Grad Challenge). Try opening your junior’s letter of intent in Google Docs, then using “Insert Comment,” rather than typing directly in the doc. This makes it clear to the student where revisions are needed and separates your comments from the work itself. Each comment can also become a conversation (just hit reply) and/or be “resolved” once the issue is addressed. Here’s an example of a letter I was working on today (blurred to protect the innocent!).
2. Using Paragraph formatting. Next time you make a heading in a doc, try using paragraph formatting (it’s just to the left of the fonts- the default is Normal Text), rather than just increasing the font size. This serves two purposes: 1) you can automatically generate a table of contents and 2) for those using screen readers, they can skip from section to section rather than having to listen to the first 12 pages to get to content on the 13th. The video at the bottom of this post (which, BTW, I uploaded to Google Docs and shared) explains this further.

3. More fonts! Google Docs just added over 450 fonts, so you can now spend 5 minutes writing a document and 90 minutes choosing the perfect font for it! To check out additional fonts, click “Add Fonts” at the bottom of the font list.

4. Easier printing. Google Docs has improved the printing interface. Just click on the print icon in Google Docs (do not choose “Print” in the brower), choose your printer, and print.

More word cloud tools

You probably have seen Wordle, the tool that analyzes text for word frequency, then arranges the words graphically (the Advisory wordle is a good example of this). There are other tools that are similar and are worth a try. Here are two:

Tagxedo is much like Wordle, expect that it allows you to decide the shape of the final image. Here, for example, is our course catalog in the shape of a hawk (note that these screen shots are not as much fun as the online version- try it yourself and you'll see what I mean):


WordSift is not as pretty as the others, but clicking on a word in WordSift brings up images and a visual thesaurus representation. This might be especially useful for ELL students. Again, here's our course catalog:


Unfortunately, neither of these have built-in printing, so you need to take a screen shot if you want them on paper.

Want more? Here's a blog post that discusses other word cloud tools:
http://www.techlearning.com/default.aspx?tabid=67&entryid=364