Writing with Wordle
July 12, 2011
You probably would have guessed that raven was one of the most frequently used words in Poe’s “The Raven,” but the Wordle word cloud on the right makes the impact of that word visually obvious. Wordle is a free tool that can make a word cloud out of any text that is pasted into a form or by using the text on a webpage. It includes some choices for formatting, so that you can change the color and layout of the words. You can also omit commonly used words. The final cloud can be printed or saved.
Last week, Edutopia shared some ideas for using Wordle in the classroom, as part of their New Teacher Boot Camp. In addition to checking out the Edutopia resources, take a look at these blog posts for more ideas on using word clouds for reading and writing activities in the classroom:
- Wordle: Word Maps for Fun and Analysis
- Wordle and the Inauguration
- Using Wordle Images to Hear What’s Said
- Text + Image = Tagxedo: The Next Generation of Word Cloud Fun
This post is the introduction from “July 11 to 16 on ReadWriteThink.” Read the rest of the post on Facebook.