Richard D. Solomon's Blog on Mentoring Jewish Students and Teachers: How Tagxedo can be used to promote learning

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

How Tagxedo can be used to promote learning

When mentoring our pre-service and in-service teachers we need to describe and model both research-based and clinically tested best practices, and demonstrate how these best practices can be applied in the real (i.e. physical) and virtual (i.e. online) classroom for both teaching and teacher training. The combination of face to face instruction in a physical setting and online learning is called blended learning. In this section of the blog we will describe how the internet can serve as a supplemental resource for instruction and the mentoring of pre-service and in-service Jewish educators. In this post we will continue our discussion of Tagxedo, a website that enables users to create their own word collages or web clouds.

Assumption: The teacher or mentor teacher has a interactive white board (i.e. SMART Board, Promethean, etc.), a Tablet PC (also called a Slate or Blade), a computer presenter or computer with internet access attached to an LCD projector in the classroom. It would be ideal if students or mentees had access to their own laptop computers or Ipads. Given parental and school approval, and the development of specific guidelines, smartphones can be used to enhance instruction as well.

Note: Although Tagxedo can be applied in the Judaic Studies blended learning classroom, it can be also be used for training pre-service and in-service Jewish educators for professional or staff development. It is our hope that Jewish educators around the globe will form an online community of practice, a CoP, a group of people who share an interest, a craft, and/or a profession, to enhance the delivery of instruction and training of Jewish educators. For example, here is a CoP you might want to join.

What is Tagxedo?

Tagxedo is a web-base tool that enables its users to create word collages or word clouds.

For a definition of a word collage click here.

Where is Tagxedo located on the web?

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

How can Tagedo be used to promote learning?

Click on the links below and find resources explaining how Tagxedo can be used to encourage learning: