Wordle, Popplet, and StoryJumper - The first round of classroom tools

So in class all of the students are presenting cool free classroom tools they have found on the internet and my assignment is to reflect on their possible usage in the classroom and if they were share a place in my future classroom or not and why.

First up is Wordle - http://www.wordle.net/

Wordle is a free online program that allows you to type a paragraph in to a text box and on the next page the words that show up the most in the text will be the largest, the second most be the second largest, and so on and so forth. I can see something like this being a good use of poster space in my future history classroom, to get across the broad message of important words used in famous speeches or documents. My students could write a report and then pop it in to Wordle to see what words they use the most and why - and they could write a response for that as well! I see Wordle being a very useful tool in a history classroom setting because words hold weight in history.

The downsides are that there is no real printable method of these creations and you have to result to print-screen capturing the design and then printing it out after some editing.

Next up is Popplet - http://popplet.com/

Popplet is a never ending brainstorming bubble that can be made to organize thoughts or simply just to hold thoughts for later use. For a history project, students could pick to write about say, Abraham Lincoln. They could use Popplet to brainstorm endlessly about him and have a database of everything accumulated over the course of the project and then write about their discoveries. This can be useful to more creative thinkers - brainstorming is not for everyone, however and while the project may open a door for an unsuspecting brainstormer, not all students will enjoy organizing their thoughts this way. This would take classroom 'testing' to see if this program would truly be effective in my classroom - but I believe it is very cool nonetheless.

Last but not least is StoryJumper - http://www.storyjumper.com/

Unfortunately, I don't think StoryJumper will have a huge use for my classroom. This is a tool designed for younger children and I am focusing on becoming a high school teacher - but for younger children I can definetly see this as being a great tool for creativity. There is a maximum page amount which can be confining to a child but also keep the child from making hundreds of pages of material. StoryJumper is certainly interesting but I think I would rather have my children draw their own books at that age because I personally believe in a more hands on approach to artistic projects.

All three of these tools are very cool in their own way. I urge you to mess with them a bit and see what you can come up with! Let me know what you think of these tools. Thank you Tasha, Nicole, and Colton for demonstrating their uses!