I really liked the presentation on Wordle. It was very informative and gave some good ideas I hadn't thought of to use it in a classroom. Pasting in the Constitution to see the common words or ideas from the form and printing it out to post in the classroom is a great way to use word clouds. Getting to know your students by letting them create one about themselves or creating one with the favorite colors or food in your classroom are also interesting ideas. It is unfortunate that you cannot create an account to save Wordles without sharing them publicly, and you won't be able to edit past Wordles. It is also a downside that you cannot pick the layout like you can on some more efficient sites like Tagxedo and WordSift. But all in all, the site is very easy to use, straightforward with instructions, and a good tool to have for some interesting word clouds in the classroom.
Timetoast seemed like a great Web 2.0 tool to use in the classroom. Chronological order is an important skill that students need to learn. Being able to insert pictures, links, and a description adds to the events that are being entered on the timeline. Social studies would obviously be a great way to use this tool. Some of the criticisms that were brought up included not being able to add video like other site can, not being able to enter 2 digit years, and more than one entry is made in a year, they will all show up when you scroll over that year. However, I feel like that pros outweigh the cons for this site and there are tons of uses in the classroom.
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