Thing 20

Graphic organizers are wonderful tools to help us organize our thoughts and ideas.  I imagined my 5th grade science class brainstorming thoughts about our ecosystem.  I used Bubbl.us and it was appropriate for this type of activity.  Not only could the students do their original brainstorming on this topic, it would be very easy to now put them in groups and have each group focus on a topic of importance to them on how we can impact our ecosystem.  They can use this graphic organizer to expand on the original ideas; say, on the topic of recycling.  After they ennumerate the different aspects involved in responsible recycling, they can then choose how to divide up the work or research.  Each person can then create their own organizer for their particular part of the project.  Graphic organizers focus us on the important 'stuff ' of our work and help us to visually see the bigger picture.

When I worked with my 5th grade team we used graphic organizers to plan our group projects, like our reading incentives and our Heritage Project.  I buy what was said about the amount of information we take in visually compared to just text. It's one more way to reach out to more students and capture their interest and engage them in learning.

I created a word cloud with Tagxedo.  I wrote some things about my son and he became my first word cloud.  He would be very unhappy with me if he knew...
I can see that students would enjoy this very much.  There are a number of elements they can control to form their word cloud.  As a jaded high school worker I can say that teachers would have to be on their toes as to the content of those word clouds.  Teenagers can become masters of technology when it comes to getting around their teachers and trying to slip contraband sites, songs, etc...past them.  On the positive side, students would enjoy this creative alternative to expressing themselves academically.  While I would not be able to except a word cloud alone for a project, if the text came with the visual of the word cloud, that would be impressive and show me that the student wanted to make an impact with their work.

I would certainly lobby for my school to have access to these sites if they don't already have them.