Last Monday we worked with two interesting tools that we can introduce to our classrooms; word clouds and Voki:
A word cloud is ‘an image composed of words used in a particular text or
subject, in which the size of each word indicates its frequency or importance’
(Oxford dictionary). In the lesson, our teacher asked us to create a word cloud
with a definition/description of a concept related to web 2.0 and post it on
Edmodo. The rest of our classmates had to guess what expression we were referring
to. This is just an example of how we can work with word clouds with our
students, but we could also use them for brainstorming, or to make learners
visualize the most important words/ideas in a text. In this post in Edudemic
you will find 5 ways to work with word clouds and in this slideshare there are
other practical examples.
Our teacher suggested us to use tagxedo, wordle or tagul, and I’ve been trying other word cloud generators and I would also like
to recommend image chef. It is very easer-friendly, it has really nice fonts
and you can create a word mosaic with different standard shapes or you can draw
your own. I’ve created one with words related to this subject, ECO II.
Voki is an
educational tool that allows users to create their very own talking character.
Given the fact that we can choose different accents for the characters, it can
be useful to prepare presentations since it may catch students’ attention. It might
be also beneficial for those students who are rather shy as they can
record themselves and speak through a character. Blabberize is a similar tool
where you can upload any picture and record yourself to make it say whatever
you want. Placing your character’s mouth is a bit complicated but you can
always place it, try it, come back and modify it how many times you need. Give
it a chance!
I highly recommend
you to go and check these two useful tools; there are multiple ways of working
with them and your students will definitely enjoy them.
Since I had to leave early las lesson, this post is really useful for me!!I´ve tried imagechef because I didn´t know it. It was great and it is in Spanish as well, so you can make future students to create their own clouds by using it. It is explained in a clear and understandable way. Thanks for the different sites you came up with!They are very interesting.
ResponderEliminarHello, Sol. I really like image chef, I didn't know it so thanks for your contribution!
ResponderEliminarAs regards the uses of these tools in the classroom I think that the opportunities are endless and as they are very easy to use, our students and us can profit from them. Let's give them a try!