Creative Ways to Use Wordle in the Classroom for Engaging Learning Experiences

1. Using Wordle in the Classroom

2. What is Wordle?http://www.wordle.net/ • Wordle is a program which creates “word clouds” out of the text of your choice. • It is a graphic representation of the most frequently used words or most important words in a speech, a poem, a book, a historical document or from your own thoughts. • You decide how to present the word cloud re: font, colour, directional word placement, etc. • You save your word cloud for personal use, or allow others to view & offer feedback.

3. Homepage View gallery

4. Create a “Word Cloud” Copy & paste text into the word box, then select “go” & create your word cloud

5. Customize Your Word Cloud

6. Edit Your Word Cloud CHOOSE FONT CHOOSE COLOUR SCHEME CHOOSE LANGUAGE CHOOSE LAYOUT

7. Randomize “Randomize” allows Wordle to set the layout, colour, language & font of your word cloud – keep selecting randomize until you see a style you like.

8. Click “language” on the toolbar; scroll down to “show word counts” to calculate the number of times a word appears in your cloud Word Counts

9. Wordle Blog Search Wordle Blog for info on Wordle: archived posts on how various professions (including teachers!) use Wordle.

10. Wordle Gallery Wordle Gallery changes on a minute-by-minute basis! Poke around in the Gallery to see how the word clouds of other Wordle users look.

11. Advanced Feature in Wordle • Using the “Advanced” feature in Wordle allows you to vary the size of specific words by assigning values to the words • The value can be between 15-165 • Assign high numbers to the most important words & lower numbers to the least important words • The higher the number assigned to a word, the larger & more prominent that word or phrase will appear in the Word Cloud

12. Use a tilde (which is this symbol ~) between two words to keep them together)

13. Characters/places/emotions in Emily Brontë’s novel, Wuthering Heights

14. “Next Generation” Wordleshttp://www.tagxedo.com/

15. “Next Generation” Wordleshttp://www.tagul.com/

16. “Next Generation” Wordleshttp://www.tagcrowd.com/

17. This blog uses Wordle to turn users’ playlists into Word Clouds http://giraffeincognito.com/2009/general/turn-your-last-fm-into-a-wordle/

18. Another music blog using Wordle

19. A poetry blog using Wordle

20. A flickr post using Wordle

21. A Lesson Plan Using Wordlehttp://www.digitalwish.com/dw/digitalwish/view_lesson_plans?id=2701

22. Compare & Contrast: Senator Obama’s Democratic Nomination Acceptance Speech (left) vs. Senator McCain’s Republican Nomination Acceptance Speech (right)

23. Other Lesson Plan Ideas • Begin a lesson with a Wordle. Students discuss vocabulary and predict the important topics in a lesson. Students can create questions based on the Wordle. • Students analyze their own writing. • Record what students ate for lunch, put it into Wordle and see the most popular items. Discuss nutrition, etc. • Create biographies. • Pull out vocabulary from a story or lesson. • Create a Wordle to aid recall of science terminology. • Insert a Wordle into a Photo Story project.

24. Assessment: Two Rubric Samples for Wordle

26. A wordle I Found in the Wordle Gallery Entitled “Writing Rubric”

27. Links • http://www.ideastoinspire.co.uk/wordle.htm 51 Interesting Ways to Use Wordle in the Classroom • http://www.slideshare.net/JenniferW/wordle-ideas Ways to Use Wordle in Your Classroom