Designer Tag Clouds

Tagul lets you produce beautiful functional tag clouds for the web. These tag clouds may be embedded in any web page and serve as a functioning navigation unit as each tag is linked with a URL.

Tagul clouds can be created from a text file containing your list of words or from an existing website (using the URL). Each word weight is determined by how often it occurs in the source file.

There is lots of flexibility in choosing the font style, rotation of words, background colours and text colours. Tagul, also, lets you exclude words from your finalised cloud.

With minimum effort, you can produce very useful navigational tag clouds that are also visually appealing - although maximum number of tags in a cloud is limited to 300.

The example included here was created using the International Edubloggers Directory URL. Interestingly, the Wordle example, also shown below, created from the same URL produced quite a different tag result!




Image created with Wordle

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Enlightening Articles on Assessment

The second issue of the Tunisian English Language Teaching Forum (January 2010) provides some very interesting articles on the topic of 'Assessment'.

A subject, which by and large, affects all of us in education!

Tarak Brahmi has once again produced a highly professional layout, which enhances the reading experience. The Tunisian English Language Teaching Forum would be a great addition in any 'eLibrary'!

I, also, love the 'lighter side' puzzles page. The one below should get you thinking:

Problem
A little boy lives on the 15th floor. Every day, he tells his mom goodbye, takes the lift down, and goes to school. In the afternoon, he comes back home, takes the lift up, and stops at the 7th floor, then continues home on foot. Why?

The answer can be found in the magazine :-)

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Wikis and Transatlantic Collaboration

Jürgen Wagner and Verena Heckmann, from the E-Learning department of the Landesinstitut für Pädagogik und Medien [LPM] in Saarbrücken, Germany are hosting a free webinar on the topic of 'How to Use a Wiki for Transatlantic Collaboration'

* Date: Tuesday 9th February 2010
* Time: 7pm - 8.30pm (GMT)
* Venue: http://breeze.lpm.uni-sb.de/transatlantic

Guest speaker is EFL teacher Mélanie Auriel from France. Although the webinar is primarily aimed at foreign language teachers, it should be of great value to anyone intending to engage in collaborative projects.

30/1/10 Update: Full recording of the webinar is now available.

Full details of the event are included below:

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Urgent Appeal from VSO Ireland

VSO Ireland have launched an urgent appeal for Irish teachers "who are over 25 with at least three years' experience" to sign up to their overseas teacher training programme taking place in "44 countries around the globe (places like Guyana, Ghana, Nepal, China, Mongolia, Cambodia and Papua New Guinea to name a few!)."

Each teacher that VSO Ireland recruit will train 30 teachers who will go on to teach 30,000 students!

For more information please:
* visit VSO Ireland or
* call the VSO Ireland office on +353 (0) 1 814 7070 or
* text 'VSO' to 57500 (texts cost €2.50 including donation)

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Blogs for e-Learning Tools & Tips

The Digital Learning People have compiled a very useful list of their top 50 blogs for e-Learning tools and tips.

The blogs are grouped into the following categories:
* Sharing Technology
* Sharing Resources
* Sharing Business Strategies
* The Total Picture

I was delighted to be informed by James Atkinson that my companion blog, Free Resources for Education, had been included in the Sharing Resources section! Although quite a few of the blogs were familiar, I still managed to find some new gems! Nice job James :-)

The Digital Learning People also include some other very useful compilations including:
* 25 Tips for Students & Teachers Using Google Wave
* 25 Essential Google Chrome Tips for Digital Learners
* 25 Excellent Social Media Sites for Teachers

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Thinking and Memory Games

Games for the Brain provide a host of thinking and memory games that are not only fun but do also require some thought! The embed code is provided for some of the games (using -iframe-).

Just the thing to get you and your students going after the 'long' festive holiday break :-)

Why not try out the Trivia Nut game right here!

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Great List of How To Sites

Mashable have put together a great collection of 60+ Great How To Sites and Resources.

The list covers "everything from building a mashup to being more productive, creating a website and more".

Well worth a look as there is pretty much something for everyone. Have a look, also, at the comments section which contains even more links to useful sites. A great starting point for students of all ages!

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