WORDLE

I have shared information previously on WORDLE
Wordle is a free 'word art' tool that takes a group of words and creates a visual representation. Originally designed as a fun maker of word clouds, Wordle is being used in interesting ways to provide compelling summaries of anything word related.
As the site says, " Wordle is a toy 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. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends."

Now-here is one of those interesting uses. Are you looking for something to keep/ get minds occupied while you are taking attendance and getting started? OR something to used at the end of class? Meet GUESS THE WORDLE The site is created and maintained by Jennifer Wagner, an online projects coordinator. Most of her work is done with K-6 projects, but I thing you will find the WORDLES intersting enough- getting more challenging as the week goes on....
Every Monday - Friday a new wordle will be posted. Each wordle will have a TOPIC and you will need to use your deciphering skills to figure out exactly what that topic is.

As the site says:
"Monday's Wordle will be easy. All the words will have ONE thing in common.
Tuesday's Wordle will be the date of a famous event in world history.
Wednesday's Wordle will be a bit more complex. All the words will have TWO things in common.
Thursday's Wordle will be the title of a book, poem, song, fable, etc.
Friday's Wordle will be the most difficult. All the words will have THREE things in common.

Check out the archive to seem some previous WORDLES.

It is certainly something that you can have up on your TV as students come in to class and will occupy them prior to getting started. The site may also inspire you to create you own WORDLE OF THE DAY. Enjoy!!

BACK FOR ANOTHER YEAR!!

Greetings!
Welcome to the 2009-2010 school year.
The QUEEN GEEK is back for another year of information, tips and tricks for your classroom and with technology. Enjoy!

You may or may not have seen the "Texting While Driving" public service announcement that has hit the airwaves.
CAUTION it is DIFFICULT to watch!

I have attached it to the very bottom of the PSHS Driver Ed department site-Here it is for those who have not seen it:
http://www.psd202.org/PSHS/depts/pehealthde/dred/texting.wmv

With that as a prelude, I don't believe that I have ever posted a tech resource for driver education. Well here you go....

The New York Times has an excellent interactive game that every teen driver or aspiring driver should play at least once. It is called Gauging Your Distraction. The game requires players to try to read and reply to three text messages while negotiating lanes of traffic. The game ends when all three messages have been sent. I've tried it with disasterous consequences--but then my texting skills are limited!!