Discovering Something New- u03a2
I really enjoyed using Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything this week. Sadly, I had no idea that a site such as this even existed. I love that she has categorized by focus area/interest area. I saw many resources that I found interesting and new, and many that I have had experience with. I chose to highlight some of the resources that I have heard of through fellow educators, but haven't used before.
Website # 1: Wordle
Wordle is a great website that allows you to input words and phrases to make word clouds. Word clouds are visually appealing illustrations of words that can be anything that you choose them to be. I chose to share a Wordle with Hershey affiliations. Unfortunately for me, when chose to create my Wordle, the site was down, and it wouldn't create for me! I was however able to find a public Wordle on Pixabay to share. It is below:
Photo Credit: Pixabay
You can see how Wordle highlights the key words that are used and makes them visually appealing and very well presented. Another cool think about Wordle is that is a site that allows you to access FAQs and redirects you when you have trouble accessing the website. I found out through exploring the website that Wordle was created by an IBM employee who was writing code during work time. He created the program while on the clock, and IBM has full rights to Wordle. How interesting is that?
Website # 2: EduClipper
EduClipper is an excellent online resource that reminds me a lot of Pinterest. The difference with EduClipper is, of course, that everything is educational! When you use Pinterest, you can of course "pin" and save school resources, but you will run across other resources that may not be totally educational. I found that with EduClipper, you can "clip" articles, photos, and websites onto your various boards that other EduClipper users can see. One thing I loved is that when your articles or pictures are "re-clipped", you receive an email that notifies you. I noticed that the users that re-clipped my content, also had some pretty cool clippings on their EduClipper boards too.
If you haven't explored the website yet, you will notice that when you use Educlipper, you can take your clipped articles and turn them into a collage of resources. This is an awesome tool to use if you want to highlight a bunch of different articles on one topic (ex: Daily 5 Literacy). I also love that other educators can suggest or add clips that might be useful to you, They can do this by looking at your content, and if they see something that they think you might like, they will suggest or save the clip for you. I have an example of this below:
You can see above, that another user, Karen, saw this anchor chart (based on one of my clips) and thought that I would find it useful, so she suggested it for me.
Website # 3- Easel.ly
I chose to explore Easel.ly because of the excitement surrounding infographics. Infographics to me are one of the most exciting tools out there to present information. In my opinion, when things are visually appealing, they are more likely to "stick" and be remembered. I loved that Easlly lets you create your account and get to work immediately. When you log on, you come to a home screen with tons of free visuals to use if you so choose. Take a peek below to see:
Other users have created quite a few different infographics, and allowed access for usage and sharing. How cool is that? Here is one of my favorites that I found:
If you needed to know the differences of nerds vs. geeks, here you go! This infographic says it all!
I would love to use the site with my students, if they were a bit older. Typing is still a struggle for us, so I think that would pose the largest challenge. I would use this all the time for older students, whether presenting or making study guides for tests, etc.
One of the main things that I love about this site, is how EASY it is to use it. The toolbar (see below) at the top makes it so easy to adjust, cut, copy, and import things into your infographic. I literally taught myself how to use this toolbar in a minute. Kudos to the designers for the ease of this website.
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