Throwback – Custom Student Tagxedo Art
On Thursdays I usually use our social media platforms to share using the #ThrowbackThursday trend where users participate by sharing a memory (recent or distant). These posts don’t usually make it to the blog but this memory had a few people asking how this was accomplished so I thought it deserved a dedicated space (with some important updates for 2023).
While in the classroom I was the Grade 8 homeroom which meant that I had our Grade 8 cohort for the start and end of the day, in addition to any classes I was teaching. As their “home base” this is where the Grade 8 students had a majority of their classes, received announcements, etc. I knew that I wanted them to see themselves reflected in this space and student-created bulletin boards is one strategy I utilized. I also wanted students to have an opportunity to share about themselves with me and their peers.
Here is the steps we used, in 2017, to complete this project:
- Student Selfies
- students took their own photo in front of a blank background (the white hallway wall was perfect)
- students could use their own device or utilize one of our school iPads (this provided a natural opportunity to talk about BYOD and appropriate use in the classroom)
- students had autonomy to take the photo how they wanted (close up, far away, expression, etc) to showcase their personality
- Digital File Storage
- once their photo was taken, students uploaded the file to their school OneDrive account so they could easily open it on any of the school laptops (this allowed us to practice logging into our O365 domain, uploading files, and naming files for easy retrieval)
- Word Cloud
- in 2017 we used Tagxedo to upload student photos and create a silhoutte that would serve as a “background” on which to form a word cloud
- students then input as many words or phrases that they desired to describe themselves, share interests, etc (the more they repeat a word/phrase, the larger it appears in the graphic, so most students repeated their names to have it stand out in their image)
- students could also customize their colour palette and font to further showcase their personality
- Digital File Sharing
- when students were happy with their final product they downloaded the image, uploaded it to OneDrive, and shared it with me so I could print to our colour printer (this allowed us to practice file sharing within O365)
The final product is an awesome “back-to-school/welcome” bulletin board that is colourful, gives student owernship to the space, and introduces our group!
While Tagxedo is still operational in 2023, it does have some specs that may not work the best on newer systems. If I was in the classroom now I would probably do a version of this activity using some of the newer word cloud tools options or shared templates on Canva.