Web Based Niche Tool: U9A1

What is Wordle?       

Wordle is a tool for creating word clouds. It uses words to create a picture of  words. Words that are more prominent are words that have been inputted more often.  Using www.wordle.net allows you to customize the font, layouts and personal color choice.  Once the wordle is created it can be printed or shared on the Wordle Gallery provided by the site. 

How did I learn about Wordle?

I first learned about Wordle at an inservice at the beginning of the school year. The inservice was organized and presented by our Curriculum Specialist. The assignment was to reflect on the past school year by thinking about those aspects we were proud of, disappointed by, and things we were looking forward to learning in the 2010-2011school year.  Once he collected the data, he imputed it on www. Wordle.net and provided us each with a word cloud of our thoughts and responses. It was a very interesting way to look at the information provided by my collegues and myself.  It was quite easy to see what issues were most important to teachers, as these words were bigger on the Wordle. Minor issues or those by only one or two collegues were very small on the Wordle.  It was easy to see where our emphasis should be focused on for the 2010-2011 school year.

How I plan to use Wordle in my classroom?

Wordle could be used across curriculums and grade levels. As a learning support teacher, I could use Wordles to:

·         Organize vocabulary words for a certain lesson, topic, or even a unit. It could be a place to store vocabulary words as the marking period progresses.

·         Record character traits for literature read by students. Those character traits that are more prominent and were represented during many times in the story, would be larger on the Wordle. This would help students understand the character. They could do this for multiple characters and then compare within stories or between two stories.

·         Polling students during data analysis instruction. Often, our math curriculum surveys students. The surveys are then used to acquire landmarks such as mean, median, mode, range. Students would be able to clearly recognize the mode (the value in a set of data that occurs most often) with the use of a Wordle because this would have been inputted more than once and represented on the Wordle by having it larger than other values in the set of data.

·         Use a Wordle to display synonyms for a given word, list nouns, adjectives, verbs, compound words, or words with a given phonemic strategy (short a) etc…

Steps to creating a Wordle

I am excited to use a Wordle in my classroom, because it is something I can create easily in minutes or my students can with some guidance and practice. By using  www.Wordle.net,  a Wordle can be created in one simple STEP. All one needs to do is paste or type in text in a given text box and then click submit. It can then be customized to your liking using fonts, colors, and layouts of your choice.  It is also easy to have students work on www.Wordle.net  using site blocking for the gallery. By blocking: (http://www.wordle.net/gallery), would make it safe for classroom use, as students wouldn’t be able to access other Wordles created and then updated to the site gallery that may contain inappropriate content for a student/school setting.

What other teachers are saying about Wordles:

·         Great when polling students

(http://www.k-3teacherresources.com/using-wordles-for-classroom-polls.html)

·         Helps create Unique Book report covers

 (http://milesberry.net/2009/01/informal-learning-wordles/)

·         Motivating for students

( http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/wordles-or-the-gateway-drug-to-textual-analysis/22781)

U8A2 Social Networking in my classroom: Science Fair Project

Curriculum:  Science

Grade: Fourth

 Skill: Science Fair Projects

Objective:  Students will be able to organize data and research regarding their science fair projects/experiments on their own blog and respond to their peers’ projects by commenting on student created blogs.

Social Networking tool:  blogster.com

Benefits of using blogster.com:

·         Features a combination of blogging and a social network

·         Students will be able to create a profile and a blog which will contain their science fair project data.

·         Students will choose a “Friends Only” privacy level allowing only classroom peers to see and comment on blogs.

·         Students can leave messages on student walls or inbox a message regarding the science fair project.

·         Students can post pictures of their science projects.

·         Inbox and photos can be set to Friends only privacy setting.

·         Spam free blogs

Why use a social networking tool:

·         Students will use blogster as an opportunity to organize their information regarding their science fair project on their blog.

·         Students will have the opportunity to display their information in an interactive way.

·         Students can work on this at school and then access at home.

·         Blog would eliminate paper notes that students could easily loose.

·         Blogs allow students to be highly motivated/creative in completing longer assignments.

·         This could be used as a whole class with each student carrying out his or her own science fair project and creating their own blog on blogster to showcase their project.

·         All students in the classroom will create their blog on blogster to highlight their science fair project.

·         Students would be encouraged to view and leave comments for their peers using constructive critism regarding the science fair project.  

·         This would allow all students to present a science fair project, even those students that are uncomfortable with speaking in front of their classroom, grade, or even school.

Desired outcomes:

Students will use the social networking site to:

·         Display their data, photos, research of their science fair project using their blog and profile

·         Students will have the opportunity to work on this at school and also access at home

·         Students will have the opportunity to view all classmates science fair projects with the click of a mouse (All students in the class will be selected friends on profiles)

·         Students will have the opportunity to provide constructive criticism by in boxing peers a message or leaving comments.

Alternatives to using social networking tool:

·         Students collect data and research on paper.

·         Students create a presentation using a display board.

·         Students display boards and present in a large group setting.

Why Social Networking would be more successful:

·         Students would not need to keep track of loose papers as all data and research would be entered onto blog.

·         Students would not need to purchase a display board, blogster is free.

·         Students could view peer’s science projects on the blogs multiple times rather than one time in a classroom or gym setting when other students are also trying to view it. Students tend to be more distracted using the traditional method.

·         Students could take their time responding to peer’s projects by leaving comments on blogs rather than the occasional “I like your project.”

·         Those students who feel uncomfortable presenting in front of their peers would be motivated to use the social networking tools.

Ways to ensure security using the social networking tool to avoid forseeable problems:

·         Teacher will initially set up all blogs with appropriate friend privacy setting. Teacher will make sure all students in the classroom are “friends.” This will eliminate students communicating with other members of blogster outside of the classroom community.

·         Teacher will provide students with “Rules and Responsibility Guidelines Handout.” This would provide students with appropriate uses and consequences when not used appropriate.

·         Teacher will monitor blogs daily to ensure all activity is appropriate.

·         Teacher will inform parents before project has been introduced to students to obtain approval (permission form to participate in this activity). This would include parents in this assignment and allow them to ask questions.

·         Teacher will review appropriate uses with students and parents.

·         Teacher will review consequences to using the social networking tool inappropriately.

Student Rules and Responsibility Guideline Handout

Science Fair Project using Blogster

Student Rules and Responsibilities

1.       The Social Networking tool is to remain in the appropriate security setting that teacher selected.

2.       The Social Networking tool is to be used only to display data/research and communicate only regarding science fair project.

3.       Comments are to be respectful and school appropriate. Only leave comments that you would feel comfortable sharing in class.

4.       Students have the responsibility to privately report other students that are using the social networking tool inappropriate to the teacher or parent.

5.       All students should be aware that the teacher and parents will be monitoring daily.

Consequences

1.       If any rule is broken throughout project, teacher will conference with student.

2.       Teacher will report any misuse to principal and parents.

3.       School consequences will apply: Missing recess, in- school suspension, out of school suspensions, loss of assemblies, field trips, or any other 6^th grade opportunity.

4.       Student’s access to the Social Networking site will be taken away if a rule is broken. Student will have to complete project in traditional manner.

U8A1 Using Facebook in an English class

I was immediately interested when I came across a literature activity using the social bookmarking site: Facebook.  Mr. Featherstone, an English teacher from Canada, had his students create a facebook page as if they were their favorite character from a novel they read in class. Students were prompted to create the page, as if they were the character including pictures, likes, dislikes and any links that would apply. 

As a teacher of language arts, I have seen this activity completed in numerous traditional ways such as writing a letter as the character to the readers, creating a character map, new book cover with information from the character, or even writing a poem as the character. 

With using the social networking, or other traditional ways, students are implementing active learning and higher order thinking skills. However, I believe high school students would be very motivated to complete this assignment using facebook as it is a very creative and unique assignment.  Students enjoy using technology and are already very savvy when it comes to facebook, so I think the finished projects would be very thorough. I also think it provides opportunities to share and peer review each other’s work rather than the traditional method of standing in front of the classroom. This could be intimidating for some students.

It is important to note, that Mr. Featherstone writes in bold, that students using facebook need to be appropriate and report something to him if it is inappropriate for a classroom setting.  He encourages students to leave messages for each other.  Although, Mr. Featherstone didn’t mention this, I think it would be very interesting for students to use the status option provided on facebook as the character they chose for their page.

Although, I think this is a very creative way to get students thinking about a novel they read, I find that this would be difficult to implement in the typical classroom.  Although, I believe students would really enjoy this assignment, the risks may outweigh the benefits. This includes inappropriate messages/comments, disapproval by parents and administrators.  I also think this is a heavy task for the teacher to take on as he or she immediately becomes a “monitor.”

I believe this activity could be modified using a blog instead of facebook. Students could create a blog as their favorite character, where they could add pictures, bios, and links that apply. I believe this activity may be more acceptable for the school setting, because students view facebook as a social opportunity. A blog may help students still become interested and motivated in the task at hand, but also provide more reasoning to take it seriously and remain appropriate. Students could still reply to each other’s work like they were able to do using facebook.

I also believe using a blog would allow this activity to be geared towards elementary students as well, where as the facebook activity just applied to high school students. Teachers could actually implement this activity on a classroom blog. This is how I would use this activity in my classroom.