Class of 2014

Today at Regina Mundi Catholic College, we hosted grade 8 students from our feeder schools. It was the first of a handful of opportunities most students will have, to become familiar with our high school.

As a believer in the importance the fourth 'R', we used this opportunity to begin building Relationships. Below is a Wordle, that highlights the first names of our anticipated class of 2014. Can you guess how we grouped students for the tour?



In order to help students meet future classmates from other schools, I sorted our 172 future 'Titans' by first name, and created a dozen alphabetic groups. I'm guessing that Joshua, Joshua, Juan, Juan, Julia, Julian, Juliana, Juliana, Julie, Justin, Justin, Katherine, Katelyn, Katelyn and Katelyne will remember both the names and faces they met today, as members of group #6.

For more on today's orientation activities, check out today's podcast:



Thanks to the creators of Wordle for helping create the graphic above.
*For many more uses visit "Top 20 Uses of Wordle".

What's in a Name?

Having a catchy name to wrap an innovation around is a great way to create buzz. With announcements by Microsoft and Google heralding game-changing services, I couldn't help but consider the names chosen.

Microsoft is getting back into the search game with BING, while Google is considering how to consolidate the social nature of communication with WAVE. I suspect that you will be as surprised as I was in discovering the most common definitions for each of these words. To consolidate what I found, I ran the results through Wordle.


Definitions of BING on the Web:

Bing is a surname.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_(surname)

Bing is a Unix program which is essentially a ping with added network throughput measurements.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_(program)

Bing or Gebrüder Bing was a German toy company founded in 1863 in Nuremberg, Germany by two brothers, Ignaz and Adolf Bing, originally producing metal kitchen utensils. They began toy production in 1880, their first teddy bears in 1907 . ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_(company)

A slag heap (also called bing, Boney piles, culm, waste coal, Terekons (Russian), gob piles, or slate dumps) is a pile built of accumulated tailings, which are by-products of mining. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_(mining)

Bing is a soft drink produced by the Silver Spring Mineral Water Company Limited, based in Folkestone, Kent, UK. It is dark orange in colour and has a cherryade quality to it. The flavor has been compared by some to original Tizer(before they removed the artificial flavourings). ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_(soft_drink)

Bing is a Chinese term used to describe dough-based Chinese flatbreads, pancakes, unleavened dough foods, or indeed any food item with a flat disk ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_(Chinese_flatbread)

The Twin Bing is a candy bar made by the Palmer Candy Company of Sioux City, Iowa. It consists of two round, chewy, cherry-flavored nougats coated with a mixture of chopped peanuts and chocolate.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_(candy)

Bing is a slang term for solitary confinement in prison. Also: a heap or pile, such as a slag heap
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bing

Bing is an annoying lizard in "The Angry Beavers", an animated television series.
www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/The_Angry_Beavers

Bing - In Feng Shui, One of ten heavenly stems... the sign of growth like fire in the house.
www.noblestarfengshui.com/glossary.html

Bing is, with Shark, one of the original founders of RPG World. He runs the server's day-to-day operations and oversees the rest of the ...
encyclopedia.wizards.pro/index.php/RPG_World


Definitions of WAVE on the Web:

* one of a series of ridges that moves across the surface of a liquid (especially across a large body of water)
* a movement like that of a sudden occurrence or increase in a specified phenomenon; "a wave of settlers"; "troops advancing in waves"
* (physics) a movement up and down or back and forth
* something that rises rapidly; "a wave of emotion swept over him"; "there was a sudden wave of buying before the market closed"; "a wave of conservatism in the country led by the hard right"
* beckon: signal with the hands or nod; "She waved to her friends"; "He waved his hand hospitably"
* the act of signaling by a movement of the hand
* brandish: move or swing back and forth; "She waved her gun"
* a hairdo that creates undulations in the hair
* roll: move in a wavy pattern or with a rising and falling motion; "The curtains undulated"; "the waves rolled towards the beach"
* an undulating curve
* curl: twist or roll into coils or ringlets; "curl my hair, please"
* a persistent and widespread unusual weather condition (especially of unusual temperatures); "a heat wave"
* set waves in; "she asked the hairdresser to wave her hair"
* a member of the women's reserve of the United States Navy; originally organized during World War II but now no longer a separate branch
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

* The wave (British English: Mexican wave; also stadium wave), is achieved in a packed stadium when successive groups of spectators briefly stand ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_(crowd_action)

Top 20 Uses for Wordle

Wordle Wordle is a free 'word art' tool that crunches any chunk of text in the production of a visual representation of the content. The resulting graphic emphasizes the most common words by amplifying their size based on frequency. Originally designed to give pleasure, Wordle is being used in interesting ways to provide compelling summaries of political speeches, blog posts, twitter feeds, news articles and more, but there are additional educational uses worth considering.

A few ideas:

1] Convert a sonnet or Shakespearean play; or children's book (Dr. Seuss anyone?);

2] Paste the contents of an online discussion to coalesce the main ideas;

3] Combine student 'Who Are You?' introductions, or 'Superhero
Traits' to develop a class composite;

4] Condense survey data by dumping content of questionnaire responses into the Wordle engine;

5] Combine news articles or RSS feeds on a given topic;

6] Turn an essay into a poster;

7] Combine blog posts over time into a simplified represetation or use it to compare the ideas of competing ideas;

8] Use font, colour and arrangement strategies to appropriately represent content;

9] Automate the creation of word poetry;

10] As an introduction to a unit or course, combine key words; themes; curriculum expectations to provide learners with a visual overview of content;

11] Convert nutritional content of one's weekly diet or of a group's menu preferences;

12] Condense a Wikipedia article into it's essence;

13] Paste the results of a Google search (Can you guess the keywords I used?);

14] Convert social bookmark tags;

15] Enter keywords from weekly weather reports to obtain a seasonal picture;

16] Distill song lyrics like "Stairway to Heaven";

17] Find out what you've been up to by summarizing To-Do lists;

18] Represent the results of a brainstorming session or the minutes of a meeting visually;

19] Show "Today in History" stories in a new way;

20] Convert past or current email messages into a composite of your correspondence;


Do you use Wordle? Have you considered using Wordle with students? If so, what other strategies would you recommend?

What's the Most Important thing You've Learned from Your PLN?

Tomorrow morning I'm taking a road trip to attend the ABEL Summer Institute where my session on Personal Learning Networks should dovetail nicely with the theme "Intersections: Where Learner, Literacy and Technology Meet."

In my session, I'll be highlighting a number of online tools that educators and students can harness to develop learning relationships with colleagues around the world. To this end, it seems a natural segue for me to invite members of my own PLN to contribute to the session.

While you are welcome to read the responses of other educators by scrolling to the bottom of my brief Personal Learning Networks Survey, I'd love to know "What's the most important thing you've learned from your PLN?" Who knows, you might one day find yourself teaching others about PLNs, by revisiting the results of this survey...

For the benefit of attendees and others interested PLN development, my workshop materials are located here: The Golden Fleece Wiki, Teacher 2.0, HomePageStartup, Delicious, Google Reader, Twitter.

Workshop attendees are invited to share their comments on the Social Networking for Teachers workshop by clicking the 'comment' button below.



Image Credit: Wordle has been used to reframe PLN survey responses.