Thursday, February 24, 2011

Week 5, Thing #12: Fun 'n' Games

I love Wordle and have found it to be very useful for all sorts of things, from bookmarks to birthday cards to certificates (I used significant events and people to create a great certificate of lifetime accomplishment for my father's 85th birthday). Library TAs use Wordle to make cards, graphics for display, and bookmarks. Use it, play with it, love it.... I created the Wordle below when one of our teachers retired a couple of years ago.

My TAs and other students play with FreeRice.com in starts and spurts. It is a great vocabulary builder and it is a self-motivator. There is something mesmerizing and compulsive about it (don't tell anyone that I do Farmville). Students like it, it feels as if they are accomplishing something, so I like it.

Rollyo I had never heard of...the idea of a personalized search engine was just too good. I decided to try developing a travel site for future use (not too future...).
  1. Made an account.
  2. Added URLs--slowly. I got way too interested in looking at the places and venues. I probably should have chosen a topic like "dyspepsia".
  3. Finally, I copied and pasted travel sites recommended by Rollyo because visiting travel sites was taking over my world.
Usefulness for class projects, research papers, etc.--amazing!

I also designed a Mini-Read Poster. Easy, fun, I am going to have each of my TAs and Library Teen Advisors Club (LTAC) create their own. We can post them on the library bulletin board--and on our library blog.

Travel IQ is a a great way to teach capitols, flags, etc. I sent it along to the staff and confessed that I completely bombed on my efforts--but I can see hope for finding my way around Canada in the future.

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