Educational Value of Animoto

Animoto is an excellent educational Web 2.0 tool in which students (as educators) can use text, images, and sound to create meaningful animated shorts. I envision using Animoto to show guiding questions to start a unit project (similar to the above Animoto which will accompany my WebQuest project). Like a short film, this Web 2.0 tool is multi-sensory, helping to make memorable connections to content.

Educational Value of Wordle

This scrolling word cloud was created using Tagul.com. Word clouds (such as Wordle and Tagxedo) can visually accompany lessons and conversations in a stimulating way. I chose Tagul after conducting a search for various free word cloud generators. I liked the scrolling feature of Tagul, as it offers a more interactive component to viewing the word cloud.

For this particular word cloud, I'm asking students to scroll over the image and consider why some words are larger than others. Upcoming lessons will involve researching the connections between global warming, climate change, supply and demand and the increase in the Humboldt squid population in the Pacific ocean.

I see using word cloud websites as a fun way for students to represent information gathered from research (such as science projects), literacy activities (character analysis), social studies projects and even math.

Created with Tagul.com