Wordle

Creating Word Clouds
that Develop 21st Century Learning Skills

Address: http://wordle.net

Wordle is a free, easy-to-use Web 2.0 tool that creates word clouds by simple pasting or entering text into the application. The word clouds show which words appear more frequently in the original text. Fonts, layouts and color schemes can be manipulated to create the desired effect.

21st Century Skills

Wordle can develop several important 21st Century learning skills. It can spark students’ creativity when they share original writing compositions and research assignments. Critical thinking skills are employed when using Wordle to analyze main ideas, make predictions, and critique/revise student essays.

In the Classroom

Teachers can use this Web 2.0 tool as a pre-learning activity to introduce a new unit or story to students. They can type in keywords from an upcoming unit or book and let students brainstorm what it is about.

Here is a word cloud used to introduce the book Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie Tolan to middle school students. The first chapter of the book, located on the author’s website, was copied and pasted into the application and then tweaked using the fonts, layouts and color tools.

wordle web 2.0 tools

This word cloud was used to activate prior knowledge and to introduce a unit on “Healthy Eating and Nutrition” to elementary students.

wordle web 2.0 tools

A student created this cloud after reading The Red Badge of Courage and shared it with the class.

While learning about local geographic features in their community, students in Northeast Louisiana viewed pictures of the Ouachita River and brainstormed descriptive words and phrases for a word cloud. The cloud was then added to a picture of the river.

A simple way to add a word cloud to a picture –
1. Locate a picture that will illustrate the word cloud and save it.
2. Create a word cloud.
3. Use the Custom Palette tool under Colors to create a background and font colors that coordinate with the picture.
4. Open the word cloud in a new window.
5. Open it to full screen and press the Print Screen key.
6. Open MS PowerPoint.
7. Insert the picture and enlarge it to fill the slide.
8. Right click on the picture and paste the word cloud on the picture.
9. Right click on the cloud to use the Format Picture tool. Crop the top and bottom of the cloud.9. Adjust the size of the cloud to reduce it. Position it on the picture.
10. Save the slide as usual OR save it in the jpeg format to use on a class web page or other site.

Word clouds can also be used as a self-assessment tool. Students can type in words they know about a topic before a unit of study is introduced. At the end of the unit they can repeat the activity and compare the two as a means of self-assessment.

Two features in this Web 2.0 tool – limiting the number of words in a cloud and alphabetizing words - can benefit Special Education and ESL students. Take a look at “Word Clouds in the Differentiated Classroom. Special Education and English Language Learner Teaching Strategies” by Lyn Brogan.

More classroom ideas -

38 Interesting Ways to Use Wordle

Tutorial:

Here is a basic video to get you started – Introduction to Using Wordle

Safety Concerns for Educators and Students:

Wordle, like most Web 2.0 tools, is available to users throughout the world. The owner and creator does not censor the word clouds created by program. In the past, inappropriate content would sometimes be displayed on the site’s home/front page. In August 2009 this problem was addressed when the creator, Jonathan Feinberg, began vetting clouds used on the home/front page to ensure that inappropriate content would not appear on this page.. He also suggested that school networking administrators block the URLs for the gallery page and two other pages. The following information is taken from the site's FAQ –

The Wordle front page will never feature images or links that are inappropriate for classroom use. Therefore, it's possible to configure an institution's "site-blocking" software to keep Wordle safe for classroom use.

Simply have your networking administrator block the following base URLs: http://www.wordle.net/gallery http://www.wordle.net/next http://www.wordle.net/random

and your users will not be inadvertently shown anything that's not safe for classrooms.

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SBI!