Tagxedo to Start the School Year & the Class Blog.
Posted by Lois on January 12, 2013
GETTING TO KNOW YOU
Why not start the school year with a Tagxedo of each student in your class? Add the final image to your class blog as a “getting to know you” activity.
PROCESS
- Introduce the students to the idea of Tagxedo so that they understand what they are working toward. Ideally use a Tagxedo of yourself that will also be part of the class blog.
- Model the writing process where students write a paragraph introducing themselves, their interests, hobbies and favourite things. This paragraph will be useful throughout the year for other things such as the “About” on a personal blog. Explain to the students that the image will look better if the paragraph contains more words rather than less.
- Have a photo of each student ready to use and load it onto the computers or network where the students can access it.
- Open Tagxedo and follow the instructions below (Click on the thumbnails to enlarge them).
- Upload the saved Tagxedo screen capture into the class blog.
Skills
English -
- Writing (this could be as simple as a list of sentences and facts or it could be a more elaborate biography)
ICT -
- Saving and retrieving files and navigating the school network
- Logging into the class blog
- Creating a blog post, and uploading an image.
A similar activity using Wordle is described in this post called Word to Wordle.
January 20th, 2013 at 4:01 pm
Hi there,
Thank you for sharing these great ideas….I too have been scouring sites and Pinterest to give me inspiration for something different for the beginning of the school year! I didn’t realise you can use your own image for tagxedo, will be great for me because we are not allowed to use students faces in photos, however this will make them impossible to recognise!
Thanks again.
January 20th, 2013 at 4:47 pm
Hi Leah
Yes I think that is a real advantage about using Tagxedo too. I know a lot of schools are still not using student images in their blogs. I’ll just have to double check that Tagxedo is not blocked before the teachers try it.
Thanks for the comment Leah. Hope your year is a good one.
January 23rd, 2013 at 2:22 am
Hi Lois,
Thanks a million for a terrific idea!
Just a little help please? I have followed your process and have created a tagxedo but I am not sure how to embed it in my class blog. I have clicked on the save/share button but cannot seem to generate a code?
Many thanks,
Gill
January 23rd, 2013 at 3:41 am
Hi Gill
Thanks for the comment Gill.
I think the easiest way to add the Tagxedo image to your blog is to take a screen-image of your favourite Tagxedo images (I usually save a few images – command shift 4 on a Mac or use the Snipping tool on a Windows based machine). Once you have the image saved on you computer (they usually land on my desktop) then you can upload it to your blog using the Upload/Insert images icon. Treat the product as an image rather than something that needs an embed code. The interactive features are hard to capture unless you make a movie of the mouseover effects.
I hope this answers your query.
If not please let me know
Cheers
Lois
January 25th, 2013 at 5:12 am
Thanks Lois,
Is it human nature to always look for the hardest solution instead of the easiest?
Happy 1st week of school,
Gill