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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.

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.

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.

"See, when we focus on this more timely and frequent feedback to change and adjust our instruction, we are focusing on the teacher side of things. The true beauty and value of more frequent and timely assessments is not just to help guide and drive our instruction, it's to provide frequent and timely feedback for our students so they can take more ownership and control over their learning."

"Excerpted from Teach Like Finland: 33 Simple Strategies For Joyful Classrooms (c) 2017 by Timothy D. Walker. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton.  Schedule brain breaks Like a zombie, Sami*-one of my fifth graders-lumbered over to me and hissed, "I think I'm going to explode! I'm not used to this schedule." And I believed him. An angry red rash was starting to form on his forehead. Yikes, I thought, what a way to begin my first year of teaching in Finland. It was only the third day of school, and I was already pushing a student to the breaking point. When I took him aside, I quickly discovered why he was so upset. Throughout this first week of school, I had gotten creative with my fifth grade timetable. If you recall, students in Finland normally take a fifteen-minute break for every forty-five minutes of instruction. During a typical break, the children head outside to play and socialize with friends. I didn't see the point of these frequent pit stops. As a teacher in the United States, I'd usually spent consecutive hours with my students in the classroom. And I was trying to replicate this model in Finland. The Finnish way seemed soft, and I was convinced that kids learned better with longer stretches of instructional time. So I decided to hold my students back from their regularly scheduled break and teach two forty-five-minute lessons in a row, followed by a double break of thirty minutes. Now I knew why the red dots had appeared on Sami's forehead."

"Cue the hand-wringing about digital distraction: Fewer children are reading books frequently for fun, according to a new report released Thursday by Scholastic, the children's book publisher. In a 2014 survey of just over 1,000 children ages 6 to 17, only 31 percent said they read a book for fun almost daily, down from 37 percent four years ago. There were some consistent patterns among the heavier readers: For the younger children - ages 6 to 11 - being read aloud to regularly and having restricted online time were correlated with frequent reading; for the older children - ages 12 to 17 - one of the largest predictors was whether they had time to read on their own during the school day."

"Reading articles and posts on your iPad necessitates having a solid dictionary app installed on it. It is definitely not practical to be frequently having recourse to an online dictionary while there are several apps that when installed on your ipad, can be integrated with the text you read and all it takes to define a certain term is tapping onto it two times."

"Social media has the potential to strike fear in the hearts of many educators. It's a frequent topic in articles and education Twitter chats. Everyone has lines in the sand about social media. Some educators aren't comfortable being public in spaces where students can see them. Others have strict rules about how they interact online professionally. Often, teachers have school and personal accounts, effectively separating personal and private lives."

"Do you have students who rarely raise their hand when you ask a question? When I think back about kids in my classroom who didn't participate at first, I remember Jared and Maya (whose names I changed). Jared was polite, listened to his classmates, and did his homework. But when I asked questions or set up class discussions, Jared remained silent. Maya was really creative and an avid reader. She also didn't participate, frequently had her head down in class, and was reluctant to start work. Some of our students might sit quietly through each lesson or be visibly disengaged. Maybe they don't understand the lesson, are embarrassed, or hesitantly wait for another peer to share. Jared and Maya certainly aren't unique. "

"Hundred Zeros is a frequently updated catalog of best-sellers that are free on Amazon. You can also download and read Kindle ebooks on your computer, mobile phone, tablet, or the browser."

"The idea of students sitting in front of PCs learning how to use Word is as dead as the proverbial dead parrot. It is already an antiquated model of learning - like chalk or fountain pens with ink-wells; it has a whiff of the twentieth century about it, rather than preparing our students for the future."

"Many educators and school leaders alike often wonder how students can be appropriately assessed in maker environments. One of the questions that I am asked most frequently is: How do we assess in a makerspace? In my book, Worlds of Making:  Best Practices for Establishing a Makerspace for Your School, I touch upon assessment and say that a makerspace can have activities associated with the Standards and even can be assessed; however, making doesn't always have to be-indeed, I would argue, MUST not always be-tied to traditional assessment.  All too common is the mindset that traditional methods of assessment are the only valid means to measure learning.  "

"We frequently hear students (and even teachers) make comments such as "I'm not good at math" or "I'm just not a math person." Interestingly enough, we rarely hear adults say "I'm not good at reading" or "I'm just not someone who reads." Math, like reading, is a basic life skill that we use on a daily basis in almost everything we do. According to growth mindset, no one is simply "bad at math." Just as you learned to read, ride a bicycle, or have a conversation, you can also learn to solve equations and apply mathematical concepts. In an effort to support student growth mindset in math classrooms, Amazon Education has teamed up with Common Sense Education, Edutopia, Teaching Channel, Stanford University's PERTS (Project for Educational Research That Scales), and others to develop and share meaningful resources for teachers to access anywhere."

"Self-regard can never be achieved without self-sacrifice. This is something all the world's greatest egos have known and have insisted on telling all who will listen. It's poetic, then, that selfie-obsession has brought with it grief. It seems that frequent selfie takers are complaining of selfie elbow."

"I've replied many times to the question of purchasing a Mac vs Windows PC. I point out that value, not price, is the most important factor. The qualities of the Mac (and the shortcomings of Windows) frequently make the Mac the "value buy" in personal computers."

"Habits are unconscious patterns of behavior that are acquired with frequent repetition. This post will look at what habits exist among innovative educators. While the conditions in education are not ideal for our disruptive educators, there are individuals working hard from within the system to create change. Whether you are looking to join them, better understand them, or you are one of them, this post is for you."

"Our blog has been a little quiet for a while (okay.. a LONG while..), which I attribute to an abundance of activity, not a lack thereof! A wonderful visit this year by teachers from Iowa, Wisconsin, and Champaign, Illinois reminded us of the importance of documenting and sharing our iPad journey, so the Burley team is making a resolution to post more frequently in 2014. Now in year four of iPad implementation, our approach to apps has evolved considerably. We started where many teachers start: by combing through the app store, looking for apps for just about everything. And we still get excited when we discover a cool new app -- who doesn't? But as time has passed, we find ourselves settling in to workflows and tools that can be used again and again across the curriculum. We've realized that a powerful, effective technology program can be implemented with just a few simple, well-chosen workflows."

""The single most important thing I learned in this class is that I don't have to have tons of homework to learn a lot." Mid-year or more frequently, I ask students to complete an evaluation form. I craft the questions carefully so simple answers are hard to write. Instead, I try to create specific, complex questions that cover the material, the classroom activities and the students-peers and the individual. Many teachers shake their heads and avoid these exercises. They scoff that students would actually take the forms seriously or that the students will say anything useful. But I find the nature of the questions often elicits a straight answer-short, but helpful."

"Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on emailShare on pinterest_shareMore Sharing Services2 rocket_science Rocket Science 101 is a free iPad app offered by NASA. The app is designed to help students understand how rockets work and understand the differences between the four types of rockets most frequently used by NASA. In Rocket Science 101 students can build all four rockets in a jigsaw-like activity then virtually launch their rockets. When the rockets are launched students see the timing of each stage of the launch from surface to orbit."

"Over the years I frequently used resources like the BBC's Week In Pictures and Ten by Ten to give students visual prompts about current events. I found that the pictures often sparked more questions from students than just giving them a news article to read. The Getty Images Stream iPad app could be used for the same purpose."

"If you frequently purchase apps and games on your iPhone or iPad, you may find yourself running out of space or cluttering up your Home screen with icons you barely launch anymore. Most people say they don't delete apps and games in fear of not being able to get them back. Luckily, thanks to iTunes in the Cloud, part of iCloud, you can easily re-download any apps or games you previously purchased whenever you'd like at no additional cost to you."