Thursday 5 September 2013

Wordle on the iPad!

As a tech coach I have been asked many times if there's a Wordle iPad app. At the moment there is no official Wordle iPad app, but there are a few options out there, and one in particular that I have been using at school.

Cloudart - 99¢

    

Cloud Art is a great app to make Wordle like word clouds on your iPad. It is very simple to use, and allows you to copy and paste text from any other app, or grab text from a website. There are a number of formatting options including color schemes and font style.

It's prehaps not as customisable as some of the web based apps, but it does more than enough for the average student in class who wants to look at the emphasis placed on different words in a block of text, and similar activities.

If you've switched to iPads and miss being able to use wordle I would definitely recommend checking out Cloudart


Wednesday 4 September 2013

Helping Kids Get Started with Minecraft

School is back in full swing, and so are lots of Minecraft and Minecraft Edu servers. In my situation we are predominantly using Minecraft in after school activities, but looking at ways that we can integrate it into the curriculum.

If you are interested in doing more with Minecraft at your school I highly recommend joining the Minecraft in Education Google + community. Which you can access here. There are lot of inspired people doing great things and heaps of ideas and resources.

In the mean time I have created a simple guide sheet that I give out to kids new to Minecraft on the computer to help them navigate and use the crafting table. It's pretty simple, but a great way to get kids started. I have linked a PDF and a Word version in case you want to edit it and make it your own.

Happy Crafting!