Students & Learning First

Have you played with Wordle? Well, I finally had a chance to explore this free tool for

generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

I inserted my blog address and ended up with the Wordle above which confirms a commitment to putting Students and Learning first. Those two words are the most prominent in the writings of my blog, followed by "recommendations" and "research." I am excited to see that the message I am trying to convey through my blog is corroborated by a fun tool.

Consider trying this amusing exercise with your students after they have completed a written assignment.

You both may be surprised by the results. And you just might get lengthier written work from your previously reluctant writers.

Ending the School Budget Crisis Today

IF we immediately stopped buying textbooks, AND used some of the strategies here,

AND, IF

we cancelled all copying machine rental contracts, all laminating machine and most paper purchases AND used curriculum resources from Larry Ferlazzo selected by subject area, free resources from the Net for (Special) Education by Paul Hamilton, the free UDL resources here at CAST, and the Free Technology Toolkit for UDL in All Classrooms,

THEN,

we would end the school budget crisis TODAY and make the curriculum accessible to 99% of all students, including those with learning, cognitive and physical disabilities.

Reducing unneccessary budget expenditures while removing the obstacles to learning and shifting instructional methods away from textbooks, lecture and print-based materials (which no research has validated as superior methods) provides money for actual learning.

Do you have a better solution?

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tracy_olson/61056391/