A "Wordle" enables you to see how frequently words appear in a given text, or see the relationship between a column of words and a column of numbers. You can tweak your word "clouds" with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.
The size of a word is proportional to the quantity associated with that word, which, in the case of free text, is the word count. For instance, if your text consists of the words "apple apple apple banana banana papaya", then "banana" will appear in a font size twice that of "papaya", and "apple" will appear in a font size 3/2 as large as "banana".
Wordle can be used by teachers as a printout for students to use, it can be used online, it can be saved as an image ... students can create their own Wordles.
Have a look at this interesting use of Wordle - the entire inaugauration speech of Obama has been turned into a Wordle cloud. It is publish alongside previous president Bush's speech. This is an easy and visual way to compare the content of 2 important speakers and their speeches.
23 Classroom ideas for the use of Wordle is an interesting site to look at - and it has a sample of the author's own Wordle for their CV.
ACTIVITY TWO - After visiting the links embedded in this post, make your own Wordle. Leave a comment to this post, including a reflection about how you could use this tool in your class. (you could even add the link to the Wordle you created!)
Wordle is a more exciting way of teaching key terms in various units. This was a lot of fun.
ReplyDeletewordle is good
ReplyDeletewordle is fun
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