ThingLink

For this ThinkLink, I used a picture of my dog and added links to pictures of other red-nose pit bulls and sites that talk about pit bulls. This definitely has a great educational value, and students could use it for history projects (like the Declaration of Independence example) and also in other subjects. One way to use ThingLink would be for reading. Students could start with a picture of the book cover and then add links to different book reviews, the wikipedia page, a movie trailer on YouTube (if the book was made into a movie), and then a picture of the main character. You could also do this as a biography/autobiography assignment. Students could upload pictures of themselves, and add tags with links to their personal blog, their favorite website, a picture of a landmark in a city they've visited, etc. Their projects could then be shown to the rest of the class. This would make a great beginning of the school year assignment. I think that ThingLink offers you a great opportunity to get creative with it's educational uses.

Using Wordle in the classroom

Wordles are a great way to highlight key points and important words. The possibilities of these 'word clouds' are virtually endless, however I do have a few favorite ways to use Wordles in my classroom.

The first way is to highlight the most frequently misspelled words for the week (see below). All of the students would type in the word that they missed on the spelling test (spelled correctly, of course) and the words missed the most would appear the largest. This could be printed out and hung up in the classroom, or maybe posted on the classroom blog for the students and parents to review.

Week 1 Missed Spelling Words

Source (lists 1, 10, 15)

Another fantastic way to use Wordles is to make creative posters that don't necessarily relate to the lesson plan, but showcase the class itself. One idea would be to make a Wordle of everyone in the class (see below). Each student would write his or her name into the text box and it would make a cool project for Open House or a Parent-Teacher night.

Class Names

Finally, I think Wordles could be useful when summarizing stories or large blocks of information. Instead of making my students read a 9 page web page, I just paste all of the text into the Wordle generator and have a visual representation of the main words. I made a Wordle (below) for the SparkNotes webpage about Western Expansion and I think that this could help students comprehend the main points.

Westward Expansion Wordle

Source

The best of the best: educational blogs

One of my favorite educational blogs is called 'Free Technology for Teachers'. Written by Richard Byrne, this blog is an awesome resource for teachers. It provides reviews and recommendations on all sorts of new technologies that teachers can use to make their classroom more productive and technologically-savvy. The author spoke about applications for iPhones, iPads and iPods such as IEP which allows teachers and parents to keep track of important information regarding their students' education plan. This is an excellent source of information for educators, no matter how much (or how little) technology they use in their classroom.

Another favorite educational blog is titled 'Mrs. Cornejo's Class Blog'. Although it isn't a resource for teachers, it does provide a good example of what purpose an educational blog should serve. Mrs. Cornejo talks about the activities that are going on in class (such as someone's birthday) and also provides a simplified lesson plan organized by subject. She also post pictures from classroom projects, which helps parents understand what goes on in class. Finally, she uses the blog as a sort of newsletter. She updates the parents with activities that are not only going on in her class but in the school as well; things such as food drives and contests.

Using blogs in the classroom

Among the many up-and-coming technologies now being more and more utilized by educators, blogs are one of my favorites. They're a very powerful tool that allow you to connect not only with the students, but with parents as well. In my classroom, blogs are used to showcase the students' work as well as update parents about students' progress and projects. Each week, I try to update a schedule which allows parents and guardians to see what the children are learning in school. The class blog also has links to websites that the students can use; games, educational resources, fun projects to do at home, etc. The blog is a very helpful link between the classroom and the home.