Monday, March 16, 2009

New Web Stuff 03/17/2009


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Sunday, March 15, 2009

New Web Stuff 03/16/2009


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Saturday, March 14, 2009

New Web Stuff 03/15/2009


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Wednesday, March 11, 2009

New Web Stuff 03/12/2009


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Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Obama's Speech on Education Today...

I "Wordled" Obama's Education speech today and while I didn't hear it live, I believe that using Wordle as a focusing tool helps me understand what the major points of his speech are. I'm excited to see words like "innovation" and "investments" represented, as well as seeing the frequency with which he used the words "college," "responsibility," "children," and "teachers." I love that Wordle allows me to think "out of context" and paint a picture of meaning that gives me a knowledge base to more fully comprehend the text when I read it. (Which you can read HERE, courtesy of @mrsbrowndog from Twitter.)

Wordle: ObamaEducationSpeech
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Monday, March 9, 2009

New Webslides from Diigo!

Now, you can turn virtually any website or collection of bookmarks on Diigo into a Webslide Embeddable presentation! I "Webslided" my blog here to see how it works! For more info, go to http://slides.diigo.com

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Friday, March 6, 2009

Wonders of Wordle

Example of "Book Preview" Wordle (in place of a traditional "Picture Walk")

As I’m working with teachers, one of my favorite web applications is WORDLE, a tag cloud creator with an artistic edge. Recently, a colleague of mine, Denny Atkinson, used WORDLE with his Social Studies teachers and created tag clouds of famous speeches for comparative purposes and shared his work on Twitter.

I’m constantly coming up with ways to use WORDLE in the classroom and Denny sparked the idea that it would be beneficial to begin a list of what I’m telling teachers. Feel free to add your ideas in the comments area!
  1. Lower Grade ELA teachers – Wordle the text of the book you’re reading and instead of a “picture walk” do a “word walk.” You can introduce frequent vocabulary and let kids predict the story from the combinations of words they see in the WORDLE.
  2. Another for ELA teacher – Wordle a collection of words that represent parts of speech. Change the colors to white words on black background and print on overhead transparency. Project the Wordle onto a large sheet of butcher paper and ask the kids to come and color nouns a certain color, verbs a different color, etc.
  3. An extension of #2 – Wordle Characters and Character traits, print overhead transparency and project. Use a color to connect characters with their specific traits.
  4. Having trouble with kids and transition words? Let the students WORDLE their own writing and analyze which words are being used most often. If “THEN” is the biggest word, the kids will know immediately that they need work with their transitions.
  5. Teaching 6 + 1 traits? Having trouble getting kids to understand importance of Word Choice? Wordle their writing and let them see a visual representation of the words they chose and work with their peers to improve their vocabulary choices!
  6. Social Studies teachers can Wordle news articles from several sources and compare to look at bias or to evaluate credible sources.
  7. Science teachers can Wordle whatever text they are using as in introductory activity to show students vocabulary they will be encountering, then going further by making predictions about what the words might mean in the context of the words that already have prior knowledge of that appear in the Wordle.
  8. Have students Wordle a favorite poem or song for themselves as you introduce them to “Wordling.” This would be a great beginning of the year activity and could be extended to be a “Word Cloud Biography” to hang up in the room and then get to know each other as they do a “Room Walk.”
  9. Building on #8, if students are preparing for a holiday like Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, etc. They could Wordle wedding vows, family stories, favorite love songs of their parents or grandparents, or just the names of the people in their families to create a very personal, but creative and artistic gift that’s suitable for framing. (And it’s free!)
  10. Music teachers could Wordle lyrics or famous musician’s biographies for comparative analysis.
  11. Students could Wordle their writing to create a tag cloud as a “front page” for their writing or a “cover” for their books or short stories.
  12. School Systems could Wordle their Mission Statements for a nice visual to hang in classrooms.
    13. An Example of a Standards/Performance Indicator Prioritization Wordle
  13. Teachers beginning the Curriculum Mapping Process could Wordle their State Standards or Performance Indicators to begin the discussion of creating a common language around the critical pieces of curriculum that should be represented in every teacher’s classroom.
  14. Teachers could Wordle their class lists or Principals could Wordle their Staffs’ names to create a neat visual as a basis for a discussion of teaming or the importance of connections between people. (Making sure everyone in the Wordle is represented by the same size font.)
  15. Teachers could also use Wordle visually represent grading rubrics as a reminder of the important points that students should consider while doing projects.

I’m sure there are tons of other uses for Wordle and I hope that you’ll add more in the comments section. Besides being a tool for Analysis and Evaluation, and fitting in with Bloom’s Taxonomy, it also fits in with Marzano’s “nonlinguistic represenations” and “comparison” models, as well as Jensen’s brain based learning research. Doing things in a different way, utilizing color, creating visuals—all have an effect on how the brain learns and remembers information. Wordle is a great tool to help maximize learning with the content you’re teaching!

Update (3/15/09):

Here are a couple more uses of Wordle! You can wordle a website or a blog and prioritize the overall message! Here are a couple of examples:


(Click to view larger image)
This is a wordle of Janet Hale's Curriculum Mapping 101 site. You can tell by looking at the wordle exactly what this site is about: Curriculum Mapping! While out of textual context, the other words clue you in to the gist of the rest of the message: the process is important, the teacher is important, the learning is important. Additionally, you can see that practice and design, as well as collaboration are key components of Curriculum Mapping.

(Click to view larger image)
Here's an example of a blog wordle, which you can do by pasting a web address with an RSS feed into the Wordle create window. This is Angela Stockman's blog feed, but instead of focusing on a one main message, like a static website would, the blog Wordle focuses on the message of the moment. For the last few blog posts, what you see above is a prioritization of what's on Angela's mind at this moment. In a few days, with more blog posts, the words and the wordle will change. If this was a classroom situation where we were making comparisons, comparative analysis of wordles from changing blogs would be a great thing to consider or a great discussion starter!

What ways can you come up with for using Wordle? I think I'm soon going to need a Wordle Wiki to share examples!

Resources:
WORDLE.NET
Top 20 uses for Wordle from The Clever Sheep
Using Wordle in your lessons
Wordle While You Work!
Advanced WORDLING!
http://www.wordle.net/. Images of Wordles are licensed .

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Wednesday, March 4, 2009

New Web Stuff 03/05/2009


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Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Visual / Digital Bloom's : REMEMBERING

I created the first GLOG for the Visual Bloom's Wiki at
http://visualblooms.wikispaces.com

Feel free to make comments or suggestions!

Direct Link to GLOG at Glogster.com
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Sunday, March 1, 2009

New Web Stuff 03/02/2009


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Continuing the Digital / Visual Bloom's Conversation

Lasst night on Twitter, I began discussing the idea of a 21st century frame around Bloom's, where individual apps are identified within the Bloom's schema--partly to continue to analyze how things fit together, but also to discover that the tiers are not so neatly separated anymore.

Through conversation, I found that there needs to be a new visual that connects tiers to each other while still showing the differentiation of skills associated with learning 21st century applications.  I created a wiki at http://visualblooms.wikispaces.com to continue the collaboration and I'm posting an excerpt of the twitter conversation here.  I'm really enjoying how multiple tools and multiple perspectives come together to create a bigger idea than what I had originally intended.

The creative juices are flowing. BIG TIME. And as the week progresses, I hope to flesh out even more and continue the conversation with my colleagues!  (And perhaps create a workshop and a journal article out of it!)  More to come...

An excerpt of last night's Twitter conversation around Digital / Visual Bloom's:


fisher1000@paulawhite I think connections are part of that lower tier, and collaboration is on multiple ones. I'm changing my whole view of Bloom's about 14 hours ago from web

fisher1000@paulawhite as I think through this. I don't want it to be clear cut anymore. I want it to network and flow, if that makes sense. about 14 hours ago from web

paulawhite@fisher1000 does creativity equal creating? I would argue not. I created a wiki, but I wouldn't necessarily say it's creative. about 14 hours ago from TweetDeck

eduguy101@paulawhite @fisher1ooo Are you saying that the digital blooms needs a flexible structure allowing for varying connections? about 14 hours ago from web

paulawhite@woscholar @fisher1000 I WOULD say create = new/functional/useful (and that could be aesthetic as well) item, idea, etc. about 14 hours ago from TweetDeck

paulawhite@fisher1000 I saw the coolest tool today in Bed, Bath and Beyond, called a cyclone whisk. http://bit.ly/Ad6Gnabout 14 hours ago from TweetDeck

paulawhite@fisher1000 and the whisk analogy could go on and on. . stirring things up, mixing things together in different ways,about 14 hours ago from TweetDeck

cristama@fisher1000 Agreed...I love what your building, really have me thinking again. @Linda704 I'm watching recorded BOE meeting too ;) about 14 hours ago from TweetDeck

mcarlsRT @gr8t @fisher1000 Feel free to jump in and add anything! http://visualblooms.wikispa...about 14 hours ago from web

fisher1000@paulawhite Perhaps I'll keep the evolution of the visuals. It's a good record of how creativity builds, esp. in wake of collaboration. about 14 hours ago from web

woscholar@fisher1000 Yep. This thing is no longer a pyramid. Go figure.about 14 hours ago from TweetDeck

cristama@fisher1000 Perhaps back to someones suggestion of a cloud? I liked that suggestion as well.about 14 hours ago from web

fisher1000@paulawhite creativity is subjective. Creating is a skill based on a level that exceeds proficiency, in the case of web tools & Bloom's.about 14 hours ago from web

Linda704@eduguy101 @fisher1000 @cristama @paulawhite Y'all getting' way too cerebral for Sat nite! ;)about 14 hours ago from TweetDeck

paulawhite@eduguy101 Absolutley, digital blooms has to be flexible with variable connections.great description!about 14 hours ago from TweetDeck

woscholar@fisher1000 Great ideas! Thanks for doing that. Look forward to the link.about 14 hours ago from TweetDeck

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Saturday, February 28, 2009

New Web Stuff 03/01/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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Friday, February 27, 2009

New Web Stuff 02/28/2009


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Digital Bloom's Visual


I was playing around today trying to create a visual representaion of a Digital version of the new Bloom's hierarchy.  I'm either going to link the images in this illustration directly and publish on a wiki or I will come back here and provide all the links in a list format, separated  by Bloom's level.  If you're interested in "Digital Bloom's," you can search for "Bloom," "Bloom's" or "taxonomy" in my Delicious/Diigo tags:  http://delicious.com/mikefisher821 or http://www.diigo.com/user/mikefisher821
***
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Wednesday, February 25, 2009

New Web Stuff 02/26/2009


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Tuesday, February 24, 2009

New Web Stuff 02/25/2009


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Conversations Around Curriculum Mapping

I had a really nice day today with High School ELA teachers.

Our day was supposed to be centered around learning to enter information into curriculum mapping software in preparation for an upcoming conference day. Instead, when I arrived this morning, the teachers and I had a conversation around the curriculum itself, which evolved into the understanding that a common language around standards was essential.

So, we changed our day.

We began by talking about prioritizing the curriculum, and zeroing in on the absolute most critical standards and performance indicators. We talked about past test data and gaps that had been identified in previous workshops. That information informed our direction as to what in the performance standards MUST be represented in each teacher's classroom. Additionally we conversed about what information may be on the periphery of importance and might not be seen in every teacher's classroom.

This led to a discussion of Research Papers and how everyone teaches the format differently and requires different components. They agreed that there should be some consistency around the writing of the research paper and that the evolution of activities associated with it should start with 9th grade teachers.

I had to stop them and tell them that the perception of Curriculum Mapping is to create this beautifully landscaped map in the curriculum mapping software, but the reality is just the conversation. The conversation that they had today. That's the real mapping...and I was really proud of what they learned and accomplished today. It feels good to be part of that discovery when you realize the worth in doing something beyond yourself and realizing that your team is important. (As well as the realization that what you're doing really is in the best interest of kids--in this case--speaking a common language to avoid confusion from grade to grade or teacher to teacher.)

We still took a field trip into the curriculum mapping software, but today was a day of discovery beyond what I had expected--and I'm looking forward to my next time working with this group!

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Monday, February 23, 2009

New Web Stuff 02/24/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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Sunday, February 22, 2009

New Web Stuff 02/23/2009


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