Today we reviewed some of the changes that have occurred in student learning as a result of their being in 1:1 computing classroom. One of the students mentioned something that really stayed with me. She described her learning “before” laptops and her learning “after.” As she is a very visual learner, things didn’t really click for her until the “after” where she has access to different representations of information.

I’ve been using tag clouds for several purposes lately, but I think they have great potential for learning. Although I find them handy for my bookmarking sites, to-do lists … think about this tag cloud for President Bush’s State of the Union address this year:

What kinds of discussions could you have with students simply based on the tag cloud? (This one was generated with great ease using tagcrowd.com). Better yet, visit a site that has ALL the presidential speeches since 1776 and compare the changes over time by moving a simple slider …