Episode 2 Lost in the Clouds

Since this was the first time the students worked with Tagul, their first task was to create their own word clouds to describe themselves.  Several students enjoyed all of the different variables possible to continue changing the cloud beyond font and shape.  Others were overwhelmed.  Mr. Hall and I had not planned to have the students upload their Tagul images onto Seesaw, but in the moment, I decided it would be a good task for Justin-I'm-Already-Done to keep him busy.  I showed him how to save the image and upload it to Seesaw.  Then as others finished, he helped me teach them what to do next. They enjoyed this opportunity to share with the class and were proud of their artwork and expressions. Now we have more evidence of their progress on Seesaw and the students will be able to look back for themselves.

Next, their task was to create a word cloud specific to their group’s topic(s).  (Samurai & Shogun; Shintoism; Buddhism) The students had discussions about what words described their topics and which were unique.  Some groups discussed how the words would be explained within their Google slides presentation.  They explored different ways to change the cloud image and colors.  Groups debated if they should have a representation that was very colorful or one that reflected more of the colors associated with samurai, Japanese religion, etc. One observation was that the word cloud was “too flashy to go on our slide.”

The entire time for the lesson was about 40 minutes.  Most were able to finish within this time, but some groups did not come to a decision about their final product to add to the slides presentation.