Oh, it is amazing the joy one can get from simple accomplishments in life. I am pleased to announce that I have successfully created a Wordle, ---and I did it without any help from the resident Wordle expert at my home, the 3rd grader--- and more importantly I was able to save it to the gallery and paste it as a Diigo bookmark. I even think I was able to tag it and send it to everyone in the BPS summer group. I'll be checking e-mails soon to see if I was able to do that successfully.

I had seen Wordle used before by my son during his 3rd grade spelling lessons so I was familiar with how it worked but until I took the time to really play with it and explore I wasn't sure about uses. When last I checked the link on Mrs. K's Wiki, there were now 38 posted ways to use Wordle in the classroom.

As I looked at Wordle, as well as the other visual learning tools, I tried to come up with specific class applications, but without a specific curriculum to drive me it was a bit challenging. I seemed to keep defaulting back to using the tools as vocabulary cues, study guides, and possibly ways to organize and share notes.

Overall, I think that the power of these tools lies in the simple premise that a picture is worth a thousand words, and if you create the picture yourself, the value goes up dramatically. Pictures help with learning,retention and application. Students today have grown up in a world of visualization. Fancy graphics, digital animation and Dolby sound are all concepts that kids today expect and are accustom to. For educational concepts and teachers to compete and be accepted, they need to be delivered in similar styles.

It is not possible nor reasonable for every lesson and every concept to be created and presented as if they were an Academy Award candidate, but whenever teachers have the ability to present concepts in unique and imaginative ways, the odds of retention, and more importantly, application of skills and concepts increase. The visual learning tools we explored, as well as the new ones that I am sure appear daily, provide teachers with shortcuts, ideas, and tools to use to help create meaningful, exciting and student involved lessons.