Wordle

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like.



These examples might give you some ideas. Text can be copied from a word document or a website to use. Students could analyze their own writing projects or one of a famous author. Paste in text from book reports or a list of character traits, pick colors and fonts and Wordle does the rest.

Language Translation in Word

Both Word 2003 and Word 2007 have a built in language translation tool. You can choose to translate an entire document or just selected text. To use it in Word 2003, highlight the text you wish to translate, go to the Tools menu and select Language, and then Translate. From the drop down boxes choose which languages you wish to translate from and to, In Word 2007 you can find the translate button on the Review ribbon.
Hello
Bonjour
こんにちは
Hallo
Γειά σου
Здравствуйте!

While this feature can be useful when you are trying to figure out text in a foreign language, the translations are not usually done well enough to translate a document to send overseas. Try it out by translating a paragraph from English to another language and then back again!

Trading Cards

They don’t come with tasteless, pink slabs of gum. They don’t have batting averages or vital statistics. They are not for sale anywhere.

Big Huge Labs is the web site to use to create your custom card. It’s from fd’s flickr toys where there are tools to turn digital pictures into bead art, cubes, or trading cards. Try the ‘Wharolizer’ and make a pop icon!

More than 300 librarians have joined a flickr group displaying their trading cards.

Blogs in Plain English

The Common Craft Show© is a series of short explanatory videos by Lee and Sachi LeFever. Lee LeFever said they created this 3-minute video for people who wonder why blogs are such a big deal.

Blogs are one part of the increasingly important digital information landscape. While they may have started out as personal journals, they are now changing the practices of politics, news, and business. They are changing how information is disseminated and by whom.

Click on the image to view the video. If your district blocks YouTube, you can also access the Common Craft Show through The Common Craft Blog or TeacherTube.