Another Tag Cloud

This tag cloud is based on a writing prompt asking students to identify the most significant technological innovation in human history. The essays were pretty interesting and clearly reflect the times (i.e. the idea that it would be nearly impossible to conduct daily business without computers and the internet). I have to wonder what I would have written when I was 15. Perhaps it would have been the Sony Walkman (the one that played cassette tapes, not the one that plays CDs).

automobile bart calendar cellphone clothing compass computer electricity internet law literature paper shoes telephone timekeeping toilet wheel writtenlanguage

created at TagCrowd.com

Fun and Games and Doing Good too!

I haven't visited Free Rice since last spring and, boy, have there been some changes! The site used to only have a vocabulary game, but now it has many others! You can choose from art, chemistry, geography, english, world languages, and math. You can also specify level of difficulty. I've been playing with the geography game (world capitals) this afternoon.

In case you aren't familiar with Free Rice you play the games and for each correct answer, the folks at Free Rice donate 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Programme. According to the site, 100,938,480 grains of rice were donated yesterday. And this is all FREE for students.

Go ahead, have fun!

Tag Clouds for Students Responses

This morning I asked my geography students (freshmen) to list ten things that geography is or that geographers do. They did not have to write in sentences and could use single words. We talked about some of the terms they chose and why they chose those terms. The responses were pretty interesting. Then I thought it would be cool to see which terms were written most frequently. THEN I thought of Tag Clouds. I had never actually created one like this before, so I looked for something easy that I could do during my prep period this morning. Enter TagCrowd. To save time, I entered everything into a word processing document, then copy and pasted into the text box at TagCrowd. I left the settings as they were and clicked VISUALIZE and there it was! What a fantastic visual way to show students what terms they think of when they think geography.

There are some things that didn't quite work. For example, there were phrases that consistently showed up in the student responses, but TagCrowd didn't show the phrases. Also, zones shows up, but not time zones which was how it was entered. I tried putting quotation marks around the phrases, but that didn't help. With that aside, this is still an awesome tool to use in the classroom.

acreage agriculture alliances altitude ancestors animals anthropology archaeology around artifacts bodies capitals causes changes cities climate compasses computers consumers continents coordinates countries cultures currency customs dates deserts directions disasters discover earth earthquakes economics economy environment equator explore exports features flags flood future gdp global goods governments health history hurricanes immigration important improve investigations issues labels lakes land landmarks landscapes languages latitude learn levels life location longitude maps mountains natural news oceans oil olympics peace people photography physical places politics population reading records religion research rivers routes sea space states study subject tombs tornadoes traditions transportation travel tsunamis united war warming water weather wonders world zones

created at TagCrowd.com