Richard D. Solomon's Blog on Mentoring Jewish Students and Teachers: Introduction to Tag Crowd a free word cloud web tool

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Introduction to Tag Crowd a free word cloud web tool

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 begin our discussion of how Tag Crowd, a free word cloud web tool, can be used to promote Judaic instruction and to mentor/train pre-service and in-service Jewish educators.

Assumption: The teacher or mentor teacher has an 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 Tag Crowd 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.

Note: Tag Crowd can be used in a face to face and virtual classroom.

What is Tag Crowd?

Tag Crowd is a word cloud web tool,

What is a word cloud?

A word cloud or word collage is an artful display of words that are contained in a narrative. The words most often used occupy the largest amount of area or space

For a more elaborate explanation of a word cloud click here

How can word clouds enhance instruction?

According to http://21centuryedtech.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/108-ways-to-use-word-clouds-in-the-classroom-word-clouds-in-education-series-part-2/ word clouds can be used to enhance instruction in the following ways:

to brain storm a topic or create a discussion either inside the class or online
to teach vocabulary
to promote reading comprehension
to highlight important ideas from a discussion or a video content
to motivate students about a new topic to be learned
to enable students to demonstrate their understanding of a concept or complex idea
to share student expectations about a topic or classroom behavior
to build classroom community by placing the names of all the students in a class with a word cloud