Academic Musings & Tech for Learning

AMERICAN MASTERS: JOAN BAEZ: HOW SWEET THE SOUND Thirteen.org’s EdOnline is still highlighting Joan Baez which premiered on television in October. For learning about the 1960’s, there are some excellent resources here. Lessons plans, that tie-in with the Joan Baez video include:
The 1960s: Youthful Optimism, Activism, and Joan Baez
Vietnam Passage Journeys from War to Peace

Stumbling around the Internet earlier this year I came upon a class blog, Write Out Loud, where students discussed what they learned about this tumultuous decade in a 7th grade English Class. It’s truly interesting reading the comments from today’s students. Being a teenager in school at that time, it’s humbling and fascinating to look back and realize that you, too, have an historic voice, small though it might be. Through the technological miracles of the, television,  and a free press, you were there. Some of my friends who are a bit older were videotaped; and my mother actually attended SUNY Stony Brook NY which also erupted in violence.

The Tech & Learning blog has a great post -Why Wordle-By Steven W. Anderson – with an excellent slide presentation and commentary on how one can use Wordle in the classroom. Wordle is about words, giving the user a visual representation and can be used in many ways in the classroom, and in all disciplines. The more often a word is used in the text, the larger it appears.

It’s also an easy-to-use Java applet. Go to wordle.net to try it out. Click on the CREATE link and you’ll find a page where you can type in, or paste in, any text. You can also type in the URL (web address) of another page or a del.icio.us user name to see their tags as a Wordle. In this example I used the text from the Why Wordle blog post. Two important tips were mentioned in the presentation on the blog post. First, you can delete individual words in the Wordle by right clicking on a word and click on ‘delete xxx’ from the little menu. [PC Users]. Secondly, use ~ to connect two or more words together to be used as one term. If you want to enlarge the size of a particular word, just type in several more times. The more often a word is used, the larger it is.

Saving your Wordle can be a bit tricky. You can save it to the Wordle gallery by clicking the button on the page, and link to the URL  – that’s the easiest thing to do. You can also print it right from your computer.  If you have a PDF creater installed on your computer you can save it as a PDF using the Print Function.

Or,  you can do a screen capture to save it to your computer. The FAQ’s refer users to this site , which is pretty good, for more information about how to do that. Basically, you press the PRT SC [Print Screen] key on your computer. In my case I also have to use the FN [Function] key as that button is shared with the Insert key. The image is saved into short-term memory, and you have to paste it into another picture editing software application and save it from there. Your image is lost, replaced by a new image when you use the Print Screen key again, or turn off your computer.

At The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor, a different writer or poet’s birthday is celebrated every day, along with other interesting literature facts. It’s sponsored by PublicRadio.org and you can also subscribe to the podcast.

This can be a great way to inspire, or perhaps provide a lesson’s opening discussion or motivation.