Edutech for Teachers

Cool Tools for the 21st Century Classroom

Write Killer Titles with the Headline Genius

August4

headlinesA headline is a two-second tryout for an audience’s attention—a short snippet that must snag a reader from the distractions of the world and engage them with content. But that’s quite a tall order in our over-stimulated image-based society.

So, how does one go about getting others to pause and take a chance on reading a blog post? Well, since it’s all about the headline, especially in the online world where that is basically what ends up being shared on social media sites and/or seen in search results, one needs to use a tech gem like the Headline Genius to create titles that readers won’t be able to resist.

It’s simple, free, super useful and it works something like this:

Access the Headline Genius site, enter your title, click the “Analyse Headline” button and check out the results which includes a grade, sentiment score and a character and word count. The best part is the section that provides feedback regarding how to improve the headline. For example, when I initially entered my title for this post, I received the following recommendation:

Your headline could use some power words. Use words with an impact to provoke an response from your audience, such as ‘fantastic’ or ‘awesome’. Download a list of Power Words.

Um, in case you’re wondering… Yes, I did request the free list of 102 Power Words Would Be Really Useful Right Now! It’s a great doc to share with students!

Anyway, users can edit the headline as many times as necessary until it receives an A+ rating! Oh, and another cool feature is the tool records the history of all modifications so users can view progress.

A shout out to the Tech Chef for sharing this tool with your PLN. It’s a neat one to add to the tech-box!

Classroom Connection:

Even though the Headline Genius was developed to assist bloggers with developing eye-catchy titles in order to capture an audience, this tool can be used by students to assist them with writing powerful titles for any assignment, including but not limited to, blog posts.

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Hey, edu-tech gurus!

Looking for some technology integration ideas to enhance your classroom lessons? Then be sure to check out my "Tech Tips" for the latest and greatest Web 2.0 tools, applications and web sites that can be incorporated into activities and/or projects. Although some posts may not be applicable to your content area or grade level, be sure to check back often as I will be varying ideas in order to provide resources across the K-12 curriculum.

Be sure to add this awesome tool to your tech-box!

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