Whachu Talking 'Bout? Find Out with Facebook Status Clouds

Editor's Note: Please forgive the cheesy title. My father worked as a Director of Photography on the sitcom "Different Strokes" for a large part of my adolescence. I couldn't resist.

Facebook has a new app called Status Cloud that got my innovative educational juices flowing. It's a tool that makes a word cloud (think wordle) of your past year's status updates. It basically allows you to take a look at what's been on your mind for the past year and in essence places your Facebook brain in a word cloud. I instantly thought of so many terrific ideas to promote fun and engaging learning. Here they are.


FUN IDEAS FOR USING A FACEBOOK STATUS CLOUD FOR LEARNING

Team building ideas to help students learn and connect.

-Have students print out their status clouds and try to decide which status cloud belongs to which student.
-Have students tag their cloud in Flickr using a teacher created account and in the comment box either place their status cloud narrartive or use the comment box to guess who the cloud belongs to.
-Have student compare and contrast their status clouds, perhaps with a Venn diagram. They could also write a narrative explaining what they have in common and might never have in common with another class member.
-Have students place their cloud as a note on FB and tag 20 of their friends asking them to share common words.

Personal Narrative
-Have students write a personal narative expanding on the words found in their cloud.
-Have students create a personal narrative video based on words in their cloud.
-Have students create a personal narrative audio cast or voki based on their cloud.

Arts and Crafts
-Print the word clouds onto iron on paper and make tee shirts with students word clouds on the back. This could even be used as a fundraiser.


The Facebook status cloud is a great tool for students to get to know each other and provides a vehicle for students to reflect upon what messages they are sharing with their friends over the past year. How might they want their message to change in the new year? It also provides a fantastic way for students to get ideas for further sharing and publishing about the topic they are most expert in...themselves.

If you want to share your cloud with me, friend me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/InnovativeEdu (include a message if you haven't already) and share here.

Update! I just discovered there is a my friends link which allows you to instantly see the clouds of all your Facebook friends. These pictures could all be saved, tagged, and used for a number of cool purposes. Awesome!

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How cool, this was picked up by Facebook in Education and spread to hundreds more people.

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Facebook in Education This educational blogger was inspired to come up with creative ideas for using the Status Cloud application in the classroom.

The Innovative Educator: Whachu Talking 'Bout? Find Out with Facebook Status Clouds

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Facebook has a new app called Status Cloud that got my innovative educational juices flowing. It's a tool that makes a word cloud (think wordle) of your past year's status updates. It basically allows ...

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Update #2
You can now do this via twitter too! Here's my twitter status cloud.
And, check out the Twitterlytics at http://analytics.ad.ly.

And, visit http://bettween.com/ - if you are researching & need the whole conversation.

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Update #3
Two more great year in review apps from Facebook.

Status collage:
http://apps.facebook.com/my-year-in-status/select_style.php

A year in pictures:
http://apps.facebook.com/my-year-in-phot

os/pics

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