So Many Ideas, Not Enough TEKS: Thing 14

I love words. I love manipulating them for rhythm, for nuance, for power, so I think I could find a use for this particular Wordle thing. To experiment, I went in and just entered the URL of one of my blog postings, then I played around with the color and format a little then hit create. This is what appeared. For a while I wasn't sure how this could be used in class, but then I started thinking.

What if I posted some of Hamlet's speeches into the generator and then created posters or something of them? Or, I could make a bunch of these to see which words Shakespeare's favored for his tragic heroes the most, including Othello, Lear, and Caesar--all plays I teach at one time or another. So I went and tried it with Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech and got this.

This time I played around with the custom color function, and when I was thinking about it, I decided I could make each character have his own color scheme, and if I printed them, the kids could keep track of who said which words the most. Unfortunately, the code was rather a pain to embed here, and there was no way I could find to actually keep my own images. So I guess this is the only space I will have the ones I have already made. I also had to post them, so I did this last one anonymously in case there was still some kind of weird copyright on Shakespeare, but I don't think there is.

I went to Blabberize next; this could have been cool if it weren't such a pain in the buttocks (as Forrest Gump) would say. I had problems getting the cropping to work, then there were no instructions on how to use the mouth moving tools. Butt pain of epic proportions. I can't tell you how many times I tried, and I could only ever crop the picture once. The title page "it takes like thirty seconds" is a big fat lie! In fact, at one point, the cropping thing was so screwed up, I couldn't even see my picture. Sadly, I had such a cool idea for this, but when I mentally began swearing because the )#%^@)%^ thing wouldn't *#^%) crop my *%^#)%^*# picture, well you get the idea. Even now, because I am so fond of what I want to do, I'm thinking of going back and trying again, even though the site obviously sucks. I tried it again, no cropping, bite me, moving on.

The next few sites I tried required registering. Sometimes I get tired of that. I know that

is what my gmail is for, but I get so sick of all the crap that starts coming in every time I register at a new site. I did go to the photo shopping on line site, Picnik. I uploaded a picture of one of my other cats and started messing around. They have all these effects you can add, and since it's October, some of them are really creepy. I think there is one that you can make yourself look like a zombie (need to tell Travis about this), but as it is a premium feature, something might have to be bought to make that work. I tried putting a little pink heart sticker on Odysseus for Breast Cancer Awareness, but I could never move the sticker to where I wanted it to go. I do like to futz around with photographs, and doing it online is way more cheap than buying the chemicals (probably healthier for me and the environment too). I sharpened the contrast a bit here,

but then I put an effect on this same picture. He's in a snow globe or crystal ball now. And again, while I enjoy doing this kind of thing and can see how I would use it in a blog or power point to dress it up, stretching it to become educational and fit in to the TEKS I am supposed to be teaching for the day becomes a little more difficult. And then, as I'm not the guru of this program, I wouldn't really be able to help my students should they run into problems.

I did enjoy myself for the most part on this particular thing, except for my dealings with Blabberize, which I even tried one more time before posting this blog. Needless to say, the words I would use to describe this morning's journey there need no manipulation or rhythm--they just are what they are--and to avoid them, I think I just won't try it again.