Last week I discovered ABCya.com's app Word Clouds, and was so excited! I've played with several word cloud generators for the iPad before, but hadn't found one I really loved enough to pay for on all our district iPads when we could make them on online for free. Word Clouds is free for right now, so download it today! Side note - It would be worth it to pay for it when it's no longer free. It's really easy for young kiddos to use.
It's simple for students to type a list of words, or paste text, and generate a word cloud. Then, use the menu bar across the top to edit how their cloud looks. It would be a great tool for analyzing writing, sharing thinking, brainstorming, and anything else you might want a word cloud generator for.
Use Educreations to have students record thoughts and make student thinking visible. We underlined words as we read, but wouldn't it be cool to see how individual students annotate the word cloud as they think aloud?
As a class review of digraphs, before we played some games, we made a short simple word list, and imported it into Word Clouds. Then, we imported it into Educreations and added the sounds. We now have a fun little video we can use to review or share with kindergarten.
Don't forget that screencasts don't have to be perfect! We try to follow the one take rule, unless there is something so wrong it's distracting. You'll hear them say "bath" instead of "bathe", then fix it. : )
Happy App Smashing!
Don't forget to check in on Twitter with #appsmash4 for more awesome posts! I loved yesterday's ideas and can't wait for todays!
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