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Upload pictures and make the objects talk. One way for students to showcase their finished work to others. 

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Upload pictures and make the objects talk. One way for students to showcase their finished work to others. 

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Add personal photos and voice recordings to a digital storybook.

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Add personal photos and voice recordings to a digital storybook.

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Comic Strip Creator for Elementary Classrooms

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Comic Strip Creator for Elementary Classrooms

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ReadWriteThink: Student Materials: Comic Creator

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The Comic Creator is an interactive tool that invites students to compose their own comic strips for a variety of contexts.

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Create an avatar
and connect with Your Digital Self through multimedia. Create links to whatever it is that helps you define your digital self. Revisit it often as your digital self emerges.

Answer and Essential Question

Embrace research, learn through multimedia, draw, create and design as you construct knowledge to answer an essential question.

The Gettysburg address has been wordled here to display the most
frequently used words. Kickoff a multimedia exploration into their meaning and gain an understanding of the text.

Vocabulary development is an attainable goal that extends across all areas of the curriculum. The Common Core suggests that it's important to target deep understanding of words that cannot be acquired through independent reading.

Teachers and students can extend the learning by posting messages, holding online discussions, and working with ThingLink images through Edmodo. Publish an interactive graphic to be explored prior to class to front load the learning, provide students with background knowledge and level the playing field to prepare students for success in class

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Spend time planning an organized project then take advantage of valuable instructional time interacting with groups of students engaged in the learning.

I always include built in tech support when designing student driven learning experiences in order to keep the focus on the content, not the technology. Help students be independent problem solvers.

Grab a book jacket and bring a treasured book to life. Collect resources, ask students give students a voice, record a review and be sure to include a trailer. Then publish your collection for all to see and explore.

A ThingLink Toolkit of Resources

I am pleased to offer a ThingLink Toolkit of resources for teachers and students. Watch video tutorials to learn how, integrate with web 2.0 tools, check out more uses for teaching and learning that are aligned to the Common Core. Ask a question.

Susan Oxnevad is an educator, EdTech consultant and designer who is passionate about using technology as a tool for learning. Susan has been a classroom teacher and an active instructional technology facilitator in Chicagoland for more than two decades. She provides professional development for busy teachers via a variety of online and in-person platforms. Susan blogs about thoughtful ways to incorporate technology as an efficient and effective tool for learning on her own blog, Cool Tools for 21st Century Learners. Follow her on Twitter @soxnevad

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10 Innovative Ways to Use ThingLink in the Classroom by Susan Oxnevad

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Create an avatar and connect with Your Digital Self through multimedia. Create links to whatever it is that helps you define your digital self. Revisit it often as your digital self emerges. Embrace research, learn through multimedia, draw, create and design as you construct knowledge to answer an essential question.

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Create a Comic Strip Using Google Slides

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Create a Comic Strip Using Google Slides

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Word Clouds are more than just cute pictures out of words. In a classroom, they are ways to visually see ideas. On a Chromebook, Tagul is a great Word Cloud Generator. Learn more about Tagul.

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Tagul is a free online tool which allow users to create interesting word clouds. Word Cloud is a visual representation of the relevant text within a region (a shape or an image) called "cloud". It is easy to use and require minimum technical proficiency.

Tagul is a fun tool which promote creativity learning. Although, it can be used for learners of all ages, it can be especially motivating for younger kids and may help draw their interest in learning the language. View this short video to learn how to use Tagul.

In order to use this tool, users can either create an account using their email address or by using their Facebook, Google+ or Twitter account. Once the user is registered, the clouds can be created, shared or printed. Tagul offers a range of interesting features as discussed below. Features

It offers various shapes, colors, fonts, directions for text and animations to create meaningful word clouds, as per users' needs.

Apart from offering a range of templates, Tagul allows users to add a personal touch by creating unique word clouds using pictures or shapes uploaded by the users.

Users can make their clouds public or keep them private. Thousands of public clouds can be accessed through gallery.

The service is completely free excluding some advanced features that are accessible only through premium plan such as commercial license for word cloud art images and ability to export add free images in high resolution format.

When you create a word cloud with Tagul, every word in your word cloud can be linked to an image, video or a websie. Click on any word in the word cloud and you would be taken directly to the link.

Users can not only share their word cloud images with others through social media but can also download them and use them without internet.

Tagul is connected to Zazzle.com, where the users can purchase t-shirts, mugs or notebooks, printed with the personally created clouds.

How to use TAGUL for teaching and learning

Word clouds are a great way of adding a touch of creativity and fun in the classroom. Teachers having little experience of using technology in class can also introduce this easy to use Web 2.0 tool. Although it seems like a tool that can be used for fun only, but there are a variety of ways of using this tool in classroom for learning, motivating and reflecting, as discussed below.
Bird Eye view
Using vocabulary words from lesson plan in a cloud can be used for presenting the concepts/ topics to be covered in the class, as a recap of the concepts learned in a topic or to help initiate discussion about a specific topic. It can be used as an ice breaker in the first lesson for student introduction and their hobbies by providing them some suitable words in the cloud. Also it can serve as a wonderful and enjoyable tool to provide an overview of topics to be covered in a particular subject such as Accounting, Economics, English, Science, Mathematics or Management. It may also assist the teacher to gauge the students' previous understanding of the upcoming topics.
Fun activities
It can be used to create names of all students of the class, which can be displayed on class soft board. A Tagul cloud can be part of students' summer vacation home work to engage them or reflect on any topic or activity.

Students can use Tagul to create personalized word clouds that can be printed on T-shirts for a group or solo stage performance in the educational institute. Also, students can be asked to complete their personality traits assessment by preparing a cloud that describes themselves. Linking the word cloud to the definition, videos or other sites may help them learn adjectives and phrases.
Classroom learning
Word clouds can help students create a story from the words presented in the cloud or create pictures by words. Also, it can be used in a variety of subjects where students can be asked to classify different words given in the cloud such as classifying matters (Chemistry), animals such as Herbivores, Carnivores and Omnivores (Science), Assets, Liabilities and Owners Equity (Accounting) or Nouns, Pronouns, Verbs, Adjectives and Adverbs (Literacy and Language).

Tag ul word cloud can be used for presenting a topic in detail by linking the words to their definitions, external videos, images and web pages providing details of the topic/word. Check this example of Life cycle of a plant.

For younger students learning alphabets, it would be great to use word cloud in the shape of the alphabet. As, Tagul allows to upload your own shape to create a word cloud, showing a cloud of all words starting with that particular alphabet will help students reinforce what they have learned in the classroom. Have a look at this example for Alphabet A.
Vocabulary builder, Reflection and discussion initiator
Once a topic has been covered, the vocabulary and main ideas used in the topic can be summarized in the form of the word cloud and presented in class. Students can then reflect on their learning and discuss any issues or problems. Also, it can serve as an effective tool for encouraging students to speak. Once a text has been discussed in the class, providing some prompts in the form of keys words used in the word cloud can help students build their own sentences and retell the story in their own words.

Presenting word clouds in the class can also help in memorizing difficult and technical terms used in subjects such as Physiology, Biology or Chemistry. Learning new vocabulary each week, by memorizing only, can be a tedious and boring process for children. Use of Tagul can make the learning process interesting and exciting.

Also, if you wish to inject creativity to the assignment "read and summarize by making list of important words or phrases", ask students to use Tagul and share.
Assessment for Learning
Creating a word cloud using words and their definitions spread across the cloud and asking students to link the words to their definitions can serve as a testing tool, where students can either be provided a printout of the cloud or they can simple link them on board, using a board marker (if the word cloud has been presented using multimedia or Interactive white board). Creating a cloud using the text or vocabulary learned and asking students to define those words can be another simple and engaging way of assessment for learning and gauging how attentively students have been reading the text.
Presentation and Trainings
Instead of using commonly used Power Point Slides, Tagul can be used for creating interesting word clouds for presentation purposes.

Using TAGUL in educational institutes with minimum technological resources

Use of Tagul can be quite interesting in educational institutes where interactive white boards (IWB) are available in every class, as students will be able to tap the words on the board to see the links to definitions, videos, images or other text. However, in educational institutes where IWB are not available, Tagul can be used if only a laptop/ computer and multimedia are available for introducing a topic, summarizing, presenting or assessing learning as discussed above.
Can you think of some other interesting ways of using Tagul for teaching and learning purposes? Hit comment and let me know, I would love to hear about your experiences of using Tagul. If you are having problem creating a Word Cloud or integrating it with the curriculum, send me an email at maryam.hamad@edutechsage.com. I read and respond to all emails.

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Tagul is a free online tool which allow users to create interesting word clouds. Word Cloud is a visual representation of the relevant text within a region (a shape or an image) called "cloud". It is easy to use and require minimum technical proficiency. Tagul is a fun tool which promote creativity learning.