Dedicated to relinquishing responsibility for learning to the students
I’ve been having great fun with Prezi a new web-based presentation software currently in private beta mode. (You can submit a request to be included in the beta.) Prezi allows you to easily create maps of texts, images, videos, PDFs, drawings and present them in a nonlinear way. The menu for adding elements has a very unique navigational approach. (Easier to experience than describe.) Once you’ve added your text and graphics you can define a path through the material. But you can also click on any element in the presentation and zoom until it fits the whole screen. Likewise you can zoom out to reveal the larger presentation canvas. Here’s a link to the Prezi online manual.
Once completed the presentations can be saved on the Prezi server or downloaded to your computer as a fully functional file set for presentation. (Once downloaded to your computer the presentation is no longer editable.) Prezi will host your presentation to share with others via the web. You can set permissions open up or limit viewers. You can even collaborate by allowing group editing.
I’ve been working on a brainstorming Prezi (embedded below -click arrow to play). You can click on any element to fully enlarge. For example, click on the image of Ben Stein and the video clip will play. Click on any of the bracket or circle frames and the defined area will fill the screen. Hold down the “R” key on your keyboard and the left mouse will rotate the screen. Use your mouse wheel to zoom in or out. You can explore the presentation using your mouse to pan and zoom or use the path I defined by using the arrows in the lower right. There you will also find a fill screen icon. Here’s a direct link to the presentation.
Faced with writing a school report on an Australian animal, Tyler Kennedy began where many student begin these days: by searching the Internet. But Tyler didn’t use Google or Yahoo. He searched for information about the platypus on YouTube.
“I found some videos that gave me pretty good information about how it mates, how it survives, what it eats,” Tyler said. Similarly, when Tyler gets stuck on one of his favorite games on the Wii, he searches YouTube for tips on how to move forward. And when he wants to explore the ins and outs of collecting Bakugan Battle Brawlers cards, which are linked to a Japanese anime television series, he goes to YouTube again.
While he favors YouTube for searches, he said he also turns to Google from time to time.
“When they don’t have really good results on YouTube, then I use Google,” said Tyler, who is 9 and lives in Alameda. Calif.
While you can directly type into the Wordle text box, I would recommend you copy and past text into it. That allows you to get text directly from online sources or your own text document. Student can either work on their individual Wordles or collaborate together on one. In the later case, it’s probably most efficient to gather all their writing into one text document before copy/pasting it into a Wordle. Use tilde sign to create phrases. Example: learning~strategies. Another tip: After you create a Wordle, right click a term to remove it from the Wordle results.
Wordle output – If you PDF generating software, you can “print” a Wordle to a PDF file. Or you can do a screen capture of the Wordle. Do live Wordles on your smartboard. For a how-to on screenshots click here.
Summarizing skills – As a pre-reading exercise – copy/paste text of reading into a Wordle and ask students to predict what the main ideas of the reading will be. Another pre-reading option – give them a Wordle of a non-fiction reading and ask them to use the Wordle to generate a title or headline before they see the real article. Post reading – ask them to reflect on the reading based on a prompt (examples – main idea, what you’ve learned, funniest element, etc). Then collect all their reflections into a Wordle.
Comparison skills – Give them two different accounts / essays on the same theme / event – let them compare the Wordles generated by each. Or you could generate Wordles for two different reading – then let student see if they can match the Wordle to it’s corresponding reading.
I’ve been collaborating with fellow educators on a Google Doc guide to using Wordle in the classroom