Hi everyone!

Warm regards to all my countless followers..

Well today I would like to talk about two more little but sweet tools I came across today--- 'word of the day' and 'word clouds'. 

Starting with 'word clouds', it is definitely one of those cute tools you can use sometimes..

it basically shows you the word frequency in any written text, and emphasizes the more frequent words with different font and color options (you can play with these features to your own taste)   

it's useful for finding key words in a text, and the opposite - special words that we might want to recognize.

It can also be good for self assessment, maybe you were using to much the same words in your text. link to that - https://worditout.com/

and to the second tool....

'Word of the day'.. is my pick of the day!.. it is a small tool (gives you one word to learn each day) but on the long run- can probably really enhance your vocabulary (I'm just thinking if I would know another 365 words a year, in the past 3 years it would be already 1195 new English words In my pocket.. not bad.. just another few to go then..:))   

two important recommendations though:

 A. pick a 'word of the day' that suits your level, so you won't find yourself learning words that native English speakers do not know.. the best option I saw that applies to that is  'word think' under  http://www.wordthink.com/ 

B. I would also probably recommend to go over (even quickly) the words, every week or so, and than every month and so you will actually remember the words.  

blessings       

        

So hi again, and welcome to my blog..

Today we're going to talk about some of the blogs that I'm hopefully going to follow in the next couple of months, all dealing with how using technology in education.. ready?

Well at first a short intdroduction to these 3 blogs -  

1. Alice Keeler's 'Teacher Tech' which helps make sense from the unending updates google comes out with all the time, and make them relevant to our classroom.

2. EdTecTeacher -  A group of 16 instructors that give you tools and advise that can be applied immediately in your class.

3. The Cool Cat Teacher by Vicki Davis which spotlights cool tools and apps for teachers together with updated news from the edtech field. 

And to some interesting ideas...

So starting with something I assume can be pretty basic regarding ed-tech (even though I admit I wasn't familiar with it, not so surprising though..) - snagit screen capture - an ed-tech must in Alice's opinion. you can use snagit to make screen shots and edit them, record videos and take of loading and 'putzing around' time to make it short and sweet, create really easy GIFs, and drag all of these features just like that to your google docs or to the place you want to put them in.
Well the only con..  is that it costs a (one time!) fee of 27$, I really thought (and still am) thinking of purchasing this tool, and seriously when I'll be teaching it will probably be worth every penny, for this is a basic tool to create an ed - tech classroom.

      

Something else I would like to share with you is a number of cute ideas David Sladkey shared on Vicki Davis's cool cat blog, trying to help you improve your classroom, so there:

1. Whoever of you who started teaching already are for sure familiar with the sometimes irritating question - 'can I go to the bathroom?'.. so here's an interesting solution - place a small white board in the back of your class in which the students will write their name before going to the bathroom and erasing it when they come back, only one at a time.. this will remove all questions regarding toilet issues thanks to the self regulated board. Didn't try yet but definitely is worth a try. It works for David.

2. David is a math teacher and therefor has a few tips regarding math, but not only.. on e is to change your teacher vocabulary to be more positive, using 'adjust' for example instead of 'fix' and 'mistake'. Sounds a little to politically correct for me, but you know what.. there is something to it..
3. David goes on and gives some nice break activities that your welcome to hear straight from the blog, it's just a lot easier than typing it all.. coolcatteacher
Thanks for being here, and hope you will find something helpful here, or at least enjoyed reading this stuff.