As I've been recently reading through some education blogs (
Coolcatteacher,
Practical Theory,
Weblogg-ed) I've discovered
Wordle. It's a website that creates word clouds from almost anything. For example, copy and paste the Gettysburg Address and the most frequently used words show up larger and bolder. The really cool thing is that you can create tag clouds from your
Del.icio.us tags. Here is mine (screen captured using
Jing).
I will be comparing my Del.icio.us tag clouds from time to time to see how my tagging (and web browsing habits) change over time.
In what ways is Wordle relevant for the classroom? Can word clouds help students improve reading comprehension? or gain a greater understanding of a historic document or speech? or help students see relationships between two historic documents or speeches?
What other thoughts or ideas do you have?
1 comment:
Wordle lets you paste text in, so it would be fascinating to have students paste their essay into Wordle to see what emerges.
Or even, a wikipedia entry on a book they will be studying -- one could learn from the word cloud that emerges there.
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