This week a 2nd Bloggers’ Feast was organised. Unfortunately the turn out wasn’t as big as the last, but the company was great and the conversations fun and interesting. Jo McLeay organised the night and invited Andrew Churches whilst he was here in Melbourne visiting schools with his colleagues.

It was a great opportunity to catch up again with Jo, who inspires me with the work she is doing with her students. I learnt on the night, that Jo has been blogging with her students now for three years. Wow, that is fantastic and a what a great positive role model for those just starting out in the field. I know that I will be tapping into her experiences and expertise more this year.

Andrew was a pleasure to meet f2f for the first time. I have been chatting with Andrew on Twitter and via our blogs this year. I can’t remember exactly how long, but do know that his work on tweaking Blooms Taxonomy of Thinking into the Digital Blooms was what caught my attention in a big way. It supported the work I was doing in my region with helping schools integrate technology and providing some good example of high-level thinking and learning with technology (and not just for the sake of it). So wow, got to meet the guy who wrote it. Awesome. And a great fun guy too.

IWBs were brought up on several occasions. Both these educators have a lot to offer in their beliefs and practical knowledge in the use of the boards for ages P – 12. A great rubric was discussed that was created for the use of Interactive Whiteboards by Juliette Major (Education Services, Catholic Education Office of Canberra and Goulburn). This is certainly a way for teachers to self-reflect on their use and generate discussions in our (WMR Ultranet Team) IWB forum coming up this month.

An excellent night! Thanks Jo and Andrew

Sue from Tassie wrote about Wordle in her blog, Ms. W and her SmartBoard and ended with the question – “How could doing this help you when studying for an exam or test?”

I was intrigued so I hopped on to Wordle and created my own word cloud. I chose to use my Delicious tags to create my Wordle cloud so that I could see at a glance my most popular bookmark tags. I was able to edit my Wordle by choosing alternate colour schemes, different fonts, and layout.

As I played around with the different layouts and colours, I began to think about Sue’s question.

As teachers we are often trying to give our students strategies and tools to Visualise their Thinking. I can see how Wordles could help students -

• identify popular themes, concepts, words
• see the connections
• identify patterns
• group
• summarise
• analyse
• revise
• conclude
• create new knowledge

I like this tool What do others think?