Activity 6: Study Tools

I chose to use tagxedo to make a word cloud.  I thought the program was really easy to use.  The frustrating part for me was that I couldn't get it to work on my computer at home.  I tried uploading the current version of silverlight, like it said... that didn't help.  Instead, I worked at Sunnyside to make it... got tagxedo to work just fine here!  I made a word cloud about butterflies.  We study the life cycle of a butterfly and insects in first grade.  I thought that a word cloud might be a fun way to learn the vocabulary words for our butterfly study.  I'd use my word cloud as an introduction and then refer back to see if there are new words we should learn and/or review ones we've covered already.  





Spicynodes was my second study tool.  Again, this program is easy to use.  I didn't have any problems adding the next node or going back to fix what I had just completed.  I used the preview button after each node in the first sequence.  That gave me a good idea of how it looked, and if it looked like I had anticipated it would! ;)  For the next two main nodes, I didn't have to use the preview as much.  I made this Nodemap about first graders being respectful, responsible and safe.  This is the same information that's included on my classroom matrix.  I thought that the kids would think this was more fun to look at than a piece of paper with it all written out!  If I ever make the videos about classroom behavior/routines that I talked about in the last couple of posts, I think it would be cool to add them to this Nodemap.  We'll see if that works out... to be continued :)