Critique of the two artifacts of Web 2.0 tools that you created

This past week I tried two new-to-me web tools, Quizlet and Tagxedo. Quizlet is an online flash card tool that allows you to both make custom cards, use others cards and will even  make suggestions for definitions for your cards. You may be thinking, flashcards, who want flashcards. Well I hate flashcards as much as anyone, but I was faced having some material to study and frankly my studying was not going well. Using Quizlet resulted in me spending more time studying and it also helped focus my studying on those terms that I did not know as well. So how did I do on the quiz? Well, there were some questions on content that I did not know to make flashcards for; I guess study aids are only as good as the student who uses them.

Whereas Quizlet was all about serious study Tagxedo was much more about creative fun. With this tool you create a word cloud in the shape of your choice. A word cloud is an image consisting of words on a particular topic. I used the UTK logo and words take from the UT FUTURE website. I was able to upload an image, pick custom colors and edit the words to only include those which had the most relevance. You can find a link to the result here. I am not the most creative person but I actually impressed myself.

So, will I recommend these to my students. I would suggest that they give each a try, Quizlet, if they are faced with terms that they have to identify and fit within the flashcard format. Tagxedo, would be good as a beginning of the year way for students to introduce themselves: they could upload an image and pick works that described themselves. It could also be the platform for a project that defined a concept, term, event, etc.