The first tool that I decided to explore was Jigzone. It’s a site where you can upload your own pictures and create puzzles from them that can be played online or even produced into real puzzles. Unfortunately, the navigation on this site is rather poor. Typically, you find a place to either login or create an account in the upper corner of a Web 2.0 site and there was no sign of that on this one. I finally managed to create an account once I was in the process of making a puzzle and then found that my account information was at the bottom left of the page.

After uploading my picture, the puzzle is created for you, and you are then given an embed code as well as other options. They offered quite a few embed code options, which I found to be useful given that my blog doesn’t leave a lot of space to embed something of this size. The code I chose allows the puzzle to overflow the space to the right.

When I played my puzzle online, there was timer that kept track of how long it took me to create my puzzle. As far as social aspects of the site, you can play puzzles other than the ones that you created and share your puzzle solving time with “buddies” who also create accounts. Other than that, I didn’t see many social opportunities. I would also have a difficult time finding educational applications for this site. I suppose if students uploaded their own artwork or photos they took, then they could put the puzzles together when there is “downtime” in the classroom – but when do we have that?

What my PLN Means Jigsaw Puzzle

Wordle was another option to explore, which I LOVE. This is a sample wordle that I created with the help of my PLN (Professional Learning Network). It’s the same Wordle that I used to create the puzzle above, but with different colors.

PLN-3

As far as the educational applications of Wordle, here are a couple:

    1. Copy and paste student work into a wordle to identify repetitive words
    2. Create an “about me” page, but pasting the student’s name in many times to ensure their name comes out large. Then descriptors, again adding them in several times, but not as many as the name so they appear smaller.
    Speeches are another piece of text that are great to plug into a Wordle. You can see what the most common “themes” of a speech are because the more the word is repeated, the larger it is.

Since I’ve already been using Wordle, I decided to try a third Web 2.0 tool, Writeboard. It’s a site where you can create a document that can be edited and added to collaboratively. Once you create a writeboard, you’re ready to edit and then save it. After that step, you are provided a link to the write board which can be distributed along with your chosen password allowing others edit it as well. Probably the best thing about Writeboard is the fact that you do not have to create an account. I find this especially useful since it is sometimes difficult for students to create accounts because they a) don’t have an email or b) have an email but they can’t verify it at school in order to use the service.

The bad? I wish it had is an embed code. Also, two people cannot simultaneously edit the document or they will save over each other, much like a wiki. The third most obvious drawback is the fact that you have to use codes to bold, italicize, or underline.

Here is the link to my Writeboard and the password is trymeout.

As far as educational applications, I think a fun project that this could be used for is to create a chain story. The teacher could provide the start to the story and each student then add on. Students can also create a writeboard for school work and share the link and password with their teacher.

All in all, it’s free and for that price, it’s worth at least giving it a try.