#12 (WEEK 5) Rollyo, Wordle, and Animoto - Oh my!

Do you have a group of websites that are your favorites? Or a set of online resources that are similar that you frequently use to answer homework or reference questions? Well Rollyo may be the tool for you. Rollyo allows you to create your own search tool for the just the websites you know and trust.

Take a look at some of these search rolls that have already been created:
Public Domain e-Books Search
Rare Book Library Search
Copyright-Free Images
Quick Quotes
Explore other rolls here.
Here’s searchroll created to search ten of the Reference sites listed in SJLibrary's WIReD.Try a search for broad term like "homework” or “history” to see results listed from multiple sites.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Explore Rollyo and create an account for yourself.

1. Create a search roll for any subject you like.


2. Create a post in your blog about your experience and link to your search roll. Can you see a potential use for tools like this?

OPTIONAL: Add your searchroll to your blog using the "Create a Searchbox" tool.
Select...Reference. Search The Web

Rollyo - You just never know when this little tool might come in handy.

I don't know about you, but there is something exhilarating words. They can be combined into phrases, sentences, books, etc to convey meaning, but they can also convey incredible amounts of meaning when just grouped together in a seemingly-random pattern. Wordle allows you to create amazing word clouds out of your own chunks of text. Copy and paste your text into the word box, or enter the URL of any blog, blog feed, or any other web page that has an Atom or RSS feed, and Wordle will analyze it, then create a customized word cloud. The clouds are based on frequency of word usage. You can adjust font, color, shape, etc to suit your purposes.

1. Go to Wordle and click on Create in the toolbar across the top, or in the middle of the page.

2. Copy and paste your text into the box. Click Go.

3. Once your cloud appears, you can edit.

• "Language" allows you to change the case of the words, and remove common words (like "the" or "and"). By default, common English words are removed.

4. You can then print or save to a public gallery.

Feeling more adventurous? Check out the Wordle Advanced Tools page.

What can you do with Wordle, besides just play??

Curriculum Connections:

1. Have students paste thier papers and essays into the text box and see which words are most used. Go to the "Language" tab and select "Do Not Remove Common Words." It might help them think twice about using "the" and "and" so often...

2. Analyze presidential speeches - copy and paste speeches of various presidents and see if you can match the speech to the president based on the words that are displayed.

3. Talk about genres - select chunks of text from novels of various genres and see if you can identify the genre by the words that emerge.

There's SO much you can do with Animoto. This site puts your photos to music and lets you create a music video. You can apply for an education account in order to create full-length videos for free (otherwise it costs $3 per full-lenghth video - all 30-second videos are free)

Curriculum Connections: How would you use Animoto?

• Let students pair images and music to show what they've learned during a unit
• Let students arrange images in chronological order to tell a story
• Replace stale slideshow presentations with exciting videos
• Promote school activities and/or report on how they went.
  

Discovery Exercise:
1. Play with all three tools in Thing #12.
2. Write a blog post about which one you liked best and why? Which tools did you not like and why?

OK - Time for a "fun break" -- check out the song written especially for "23 Things" for special librarians.