Are your students tired of using PowerPoint as a presentation tool? Are you frustrated because your students don’t have enough time to prepare a Prezi presentation? Here is another way students can share their knowledge.  Students can take any report, book, project, letter, or story, that is in digital form, and copy and paste it into Tagxedo. For example, if they type a research paper about Earthquakes that they learned about from Discovery Education Science Techbook, they can copy it and paste it into a Word Cloud using Tagxedo. All you have to do is click Create, Install Silverlight, and you are ready to Load your text.  After the text is loaded, you can submit it.  You have the option to choose the shape you would like your words to fill.  This is perfect for Poetry writing. If students write a poem about a flower, they could upload a picture of a flower or choose the flower template that is available.  They can then choose the font layout, theme and colors.  When it is time to present their project, you can copy the embed code and post it on your blog or they can upload it to Edmodo. When they mouse over the words, the words will “jump out” and spin and grow larger.  I teach the students the term “function of frequency” which means that the more often a word is typed, the larger it will appear. It is a great way to determine the main idea of the presentation. It would be a great way to study for a test. Students could copy and paste their notes into Tagxedo and review the key points by mousing over the words with a partner.

I made a Tagxedo about last year’s Technology Showcase at Monaview by using the notes about the projects students were doing that day.

Here are some Public Speaking Tips from Prezi.

Horizon Report 2013 Summary