I recently taught a workshop at Wade Hampton High School about Web 2.0 tools and I wanted to share some of my favorite ones with you.

The first one is www.tagxedo.com

Here are the directions:

Go to www.tagxedo.com and click on Gallery to see the tagxedos that have been created.

http://www.tagxedo.com/gallery.html

1. Visit this blog to view cool tagxedos : http://blog.tagxedo.com/
2. For our Foreign Language teachers:  http://www.tagxedo.com/languages.html
3. Click Create and install Silverlight. You may have to exit the program then go back in order for it to work.
4. Click Create again and then Click Load to load your words.  Suggestions: Copy and Paste a document that you or your students have created.  Use for Research Projects, Study Guides, Creative Writing, Foreign Language, Vocabulary Words, Poetry, Test Questions
5. The more times you type a word the larger it will appear. You or your students can type right into the space provided.
6. Choose the Shape you’d like from their templates or you can load your own image.
7. Then choose the Color, Theme, Font, Orientation and Layout.

Now you can click Save.  You can save as a JPEG or copy the Code Snippet and embed in Teacher Website or blog.

The next Web 2.0 tool I’d like to share is Voicethread.  www.voicethread.com

Here is a quick tutorial if you’d like to know how to make a Voicethread in 1 minute or less:  http://voicethread.com/share/8381/

Here is an example of a Voicethread I did with a few teachers last semester, just by uploading the pictures from the Windows 7 Sample Pictures folder.

http://voicethread.com/share/1486343/ Teachers and students responded using Web cams, typing, and recording their voices.

One more thing I wanted to tell you about Voicethread is you can go to the website and click Browse. You can find so many presentations on just about any subject. Just type the topic you are studying in the Search button and you can preview some Voicethreads that students and teachers have made to share.

I like to put Voicethreads on my Flipcharts in ActivInspire as Activating Strategies or on my blog or website as another way to learn about a topic besides lecture, PowerPoint, or the textbook.

If you’d like to see how to use Voicethread in your classroom, here is a link to show you how:  http://voicethread.com/media/misc/getting_started_in_the_classroom.pdf