I’ve added two links to websites that teach teenagers about the potential dangers of the internet. The internet can be a ’scary’ place if students are not taught to use it properly and cleverly. It is our job as teachers and parents to show them. Please pass on the links to all you think will benefit from them, use them in your classes, show your children. The more ‘net aware’ they are the smarter they will be. Thank you.
I just found this great website that allows you to create ‘word clouds’.
WORDLE http://wordle.net/
This would be a great site to use as a resource in English teaching in a number of ways:
1. Pairs of students sit together at a computer and ‘brainstorm’ a word that is the introduction to the new unit, for example: ‘Advertising’ – this is a way of gauging what students already know about a topic before you begin. Each pair of students then present their ‘word cloud’ to the class and all the clouds are hung together to make one big one.
2. Ask students to make ‘word clouds’ that summarise what they have learnt so far in a unit of work.
3. As an introduction to poetry
4. As an overview of what students have learnt at the end of a unit
5. As a way of providing students with an overview of a language or structural features of texts studied, e.g. a range of connectives/linking words, words that show modality, parts of an essay, tenses, etc.
I’m sure teachers can think of many other uses of this site. These are just a few of my ideas that may be useful. Happy playing with “Wordle”, if I enjoyed playing around with it, changing fonts, colours, layouts etc I am certain students will love it too.
I finally found the theme that suits my personality. This is where I hope to be (or somewhere like this) when I retire from teaching some time in the future. In the meantime I can look and enjoy whilst I blog. 
)
Hi, this is the first post in my new blog. I hope it’s the first of many. This is a new journey for me so it will take some time to get into the ’swing’ of this blogging community.
Feel free to leave me a post and let me know how I am going. Cheers.
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