Words hold the potential to impact many lives, change a course of events, or trigger a radical change. Words can give us hope, they can scare, encourage, console, entertain, and much more. Certainly in the modern age of digital collaboration, words are our most important connection.
Wordle is a web 2.0 application which allows the user to create fun and interesting word clouds. It really is easy to create a Wordle. You input a piece of text, or a list of words, click go and your text becomes a Wordle, a word cloud in which the most frequently used words are displayed in a larger font. You can then play around with the font styles, colors and layout until you have a finished Wordle.
In terms of my own teaching, I can see Wordles as great activity starters. It could be a tremendous vocabulary exercise, which allows pupils to discuss classification. In the computer lab it is an excellent way to help students craft a writing assignment, and combine it with a fun technology tool. With younger students it would be a fun way to craft a greeting card or a poster about themselves.
A major advantage of wordle is that you can use these word clouds anywhere, even in commercial publications. All wordles are under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. So don’t be amazed if you see one in your favorite blog, or maybe your favorite magazine.
There is no option to save an image file, but you can always create a screenshot. There are lots of options to play with, including fonts, colors, alignment, and some language filters. You can also save your Wordle into the public gallery. The FAQ is a good resource if you need to learn some extra tricks.
No comments:
Post a Comment