Working With Word Clouds

Being a fan of word clouds, I'm always interested in new ways to use them in the classroom. I recently watched a webinar on SimpleK12 by Kim Munoz, a middle school technology teacher in Texas. Kim shared some great resources on her blog to show teachers how they can use word clouds and where they can go to create them.

So why should you have students create word clouds? Word clouds are powerful tools for analyzing and thinking critically about text. They provide students a great visual analysis of passages, speeches, articles, websites and more (hint: the clouds are created based on how frequently words are used).


Steve Johnson's book, Digital Tools for Teaching, provides great examples on how teachers can tie in word clouds across the curriculum. Regardless if you are teaching Language Arts or Math, your students can still analyze messages while turning text into art! Steve provides multiple suggestions for each content area...

Math teachers have your students create a word cloud out of word problems so they can look for clues to solve the problems...

Language Arts and Social Studies teachers have your student compare and contrast speeches of historical figures or different genres...

Science teachers have your students log which foods they eat for a week and see what they are eating most often...

There are many other great resources for integrating word clouds into the curriculum. For more resources check out these LiveBinders and our previous blog posts:

Wordle – educational uses

Word Clouds: Wordle and Beyond

From Lit Trips to Wordle ...

My workshop today scheduled for today was on Google Lit Trips. We ended up talking about Wordle. You might ask what the connection is between those two things ...

Our Instructional Technology Department has a wiki where we post resources for the workshops that we do as well as a range of other resources. As I was guiding teachers to that wiki to the Google Lit Trips page which is linked to a LiveBinder full of resources, they saw something they liked on the wiki's front page. On the wiki's frontpage, there is a word cloud created with Wordle.

One of the participants said she had seen an advertisement showing something like that, and she made a copy of it to remember it. I told them about the website I used to create that word cloud. I saw some interest in technology and decided to seize the opportunity. My workshop participants were not classroom teachers and although they may find Google Lit Trips interesting, they might be more likely to use something like Wordle. (By the way I did still share Google Lit Trips information and resources)

These ladies started looking at the gallery in Wordle to see what others had created. As soon as they saw some examples, they started working together to brainstorm how they could use Wordle and who they needed to tell about that site. I started looking at and discussing the gallery with them. We talked about what kinds of projects we thought were being done based on the word clouds in the gallery. (That would be a neat project to do with students since it could work on inferencing skills as well as critical and creative thinking skills.)

One of the ladies decided to try to create a word cloud. She was so impressed with how easy it was to just type in the words (or to copy and paste), and she got so excited about the ability to change the font, the colors, and the layout of the words. She told me that she would not get any work done tonight because she was going to be playing with Wordle. I love that! Find a technology tool and play with it to see what is possible!

While looking at the Wordle Gallery with those teachers today, there was one word cloud that really caught my attention. It was a word cloud made with the world Tangled. Now if the person had just typed in the word Tangled several times, then that one word would just be very large. I noticed that in one word the A was capitalized (tAngled) and in another word the D was capitalized (tangleD) and so on. I thought the repetition of that one word forming a word cloud looked really interesting.

After I got home from the workshop, I noticed that one of my coworkers (Steven W. Anderson) had posted about Wordle on our department blog just yesterday. I made sure to send that resource to the school I was at today. Here are some other Wordle Resource that might be helpful:

• Ways to Use Wordle in Your Classroom
• 50 Interesting Ways to Use Wordle in the Classroom
  
• Using Wordle for Comparision (example uses inauguration speeches)
• 43 Interesting Ways (and tips) for Using Wordle in the Classroom
• Word Cloud Resources, Tips, and Tools (provides some options for making word clouds besides Wordle
• More than Wordles
• Tips, Tricks, and Resources for Word Clouds including an idea and directions for putting wordle image over another picture

(I know that I have written about Wordle before on my blog, so you could do a search of that blog to find out more but I have tried to link the ideas here.)

If you have other ideas for ways to use Wordle, please share them with me. I know there are some other great word cloud creators out there, but I have mainly used Wordle (which is why I guess I keep writing about it).

Why Wordle?

At a recent workshop I was showing some teachers what a Wordle was. I used one I created from my blog as an example.

We talked a little about how easy the program was to use (for teachers and students) and how they would explain what the image showed when they created some with their kids. But there was one question that caught me a little off guard. Why would I use this in my class? I tried to give the teacher as many examples as I could (summarizing text, survey results, etc) but she still couldn't wrap her mind around it. I wanted to hear from other classroom teachers and have them tell me what they used it for, in the hopes that not only this teacher would understand but I would have an amazing list the next time I talk about Wordle. (And so would you!)

I did what any good educator does; I turned to my PLN on Twitter. I sent out a tweet:

If you had to explain to some one why use Wordle, what would you say? Use the hashtag #whywordle Thanks!

Within a matter of moments I had several great responses:

•@colport-I use it as an assessment activity at the end of a topic, alongside concept maps from all groups in a class.
•@aldtucker-It's COOL! Good visual representation of themes, versatile
•@kmadolf-Focus on key words, ideas, themes. Fun to play around with font, color, layout. Can use to check own work for repetition. (I liked this one. Students can enter, say an essy, into Wordle and see if they have any words that they have used too much.)
•@dpeter-Visual representation. Cognitive and Concept mapping. Makes the "difficult" manageable. Shows strength of words.
•@adzbutterworth-I use Wordle to summarize texts and as an interesting way to present my class with keywords.
•@FireWOW-We used it to examine our district's core beliefs. Very powerful to see which word(s) came up frequently/seldom (This was another idea that I think is amazing. Take your district/school/classroom mission/vision/rules to see what is over emphasized and what is lacking.)

But there were two that were really stuck out:

•@mrsmac75-As a starter for students to try and guess where we're going with our lesson and create their own learning outcomes.
•@ktenkely-I use Wordle as warm up. I hate the question, "What are we doing today." I give word clues about what we are doing in class.

That is so cool! Use Wordle to introduce students to a topic. So here is what you do. Lets say I am going to teach a lesson on the U.S. Constitution. I am going to gather all the text that I am using for my lesson, enter it into Wordle. To start my lesson I would show my students this:

















Then as a class we would talk about the larger words (the words that appear most often in the text) and the no so large words (the words that do not appear as much).

The possibilities are endless really. There is a really great presentation from the Ideas To Inspire website; Thirty-Eight Interesting Ways To Use Wordle, that gives some more great examples.



Jen Wagner (@jenwagner) created a really cool site called Guess The Wordle. Each day she posts a Wordle and student (or classes) can guess what topic they think the wordle is related to. They get progressively harder throughout the week. What a great idea as a way to start the day off each morning!

How would you answer my teacher's question? What ways do you use Wordle in your classroom, or what ways have you seen others use it?

Writing and Wordles ....

I wrote on reflection responding to some questions on Teacher Leadership, then I copied and pasting that whole reflection in Wordle to create a word cloud image. From this word cloud, I can clearly tell the terms knowledge, technology, team, teacher, learning, and classroom were prevalent in my reflection. If you wrote a reflection on teacher leadership, what do you think that Wordle would look like? If students created word clouds using something they have written, what information could that tell you?

I have written about Wordle and various word cloud creators before, but I thought I would share some of the highlights again.

http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=dhn2vcv5_157dpbsg9c5

Here are some other great resources related to word clouds and Wordle:

• Ways to Use Wordle in Your Classroom
• Using Wordle for Comparision (example uses innauguration speeches)
• Word Cloud Resources, Tips, and Tools (provides some options for making word clouds besides Wordle
• More than Wordles
• Tips, Tricks, and Resources for Word Clouds including an idea and directions for putting wordle image over another picture

More Than Wordles

Wordle has been one of my favorite tools for a while. I like the variety of things that I can do with it. I came across a wiki page today that presented even more ideas: MoreThanWordles. This page by Jen Wagner (twitter @jenwagner) is a collection of resources (and just neat things) that can be done with word clouds whether they are created using the Wordle program or not. I really like the jigsaw puzzle image that is over a wordle so pieces can be removed one at a time. The presentation on adding graphics that can be found on that wiki gives me even more ideas for ways a teacher (or really anybody) can use Wordle or word clouds.

Jem also does the daily GuessTheWordle daily challenge where a wordle is posted and students have to figure out what the words all have in common. You can read more about this challenge as well as find examples and answers from the past on the GuessTheWordle Wiki.

Here are some other great resources related to word clouds and Wordle:

• Ways to Use Wordle in Your Classroom
• Using Wordle for Comparision (example uses innauguration speeches)
• 43 Interesting Ways (and tips) for Using Wordle in the Classroom
• Word Cloud Resources, Tips, and Tools (provides some options for making word clouds besides Wordle)

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Edited to add later:

• Jen Wagner left a comment on this post on my blog. Here is part of her response:
  As soon as I can get the puzzle to work in PP I will upload it. Right now -- it is 13 different images -- with just the removal of a puzzle piece in each image.
  But -- grins -- I have a plan. :)
  Jen
• Here is what she later sent me on twitter:
  I got the Puzzle to work and uploaded a zip file with the images and the PP file. http://jlwagner.pbworks.com/MoreThanWordles
  On the powerpoint -- the background image has to be the wordle -- apply to all -- and it should work just fine. :) ENJOY

Blogging Alliance

I have recently become part of a blogging alliance formed by Kelly Tenkely (twitter @ktenkely) who writes the iLearnTechnology Blog that I have learned so much from this year. Those of us in the blogging alliance regularly read and comment on each other's blogs. That has added an extra motivation for me to write more in my blog . . . and it is exciting to get comments! But even more exciting than the comments that I am now getting is the excitement of learning so many things from so many people!
Here is how Kelly (who I often refer to as the "friend I made on Twitter from Colorado") describes the alliance on her blog:

• "Just about a month ago, I proposed the idea of a blogging alliance between educational bloggers. The response has been incredible. To date there are 73 educators involved from around the world. In this month of reading and commenting I have learned a great deal from these amazing men and women, I have built new friendships, and started new conversations. It has truly been an incredible experience to have educators, passionate about learning, coming together to support each other. If you are looking for some excellent educational blogs, may I recommend those in our alliance? "

(please see her blog for even more information about this alliance)

One of the blogs I have found from this alliance is "Digital Tools for Teachers: Strategies to help create fun and engaging learning for the 21st Century Learner" by Stephanie Hendy (twitter @artysteph26). This is a blog I might never have found, but I am glad that I did since I have gotten so many great ideas. I got several ideas from one her recent posts concerning finding out what her students were interested in to help her plan. She gave each student a red, green and orange card. Students wrote answers to different questions on each colored card. She used these answers to create Wordles (which are on her blog). Using the answers this ways allowed her to see which ones were mentioned the most (larger in the wordle). I really liked the way she did this with her students. She does a much better job of sharing her experience, so please go read this beautiful-looking blog!

image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/barnett/2836828090/

Summer Tech Workshops

This week I spent three days holding tech professional development with some teachers from Bolton Elementary. It is sometimes hard to have three full days of training in any area-in technology it can leave the participants feeling overwhelmed. But the group seemed to pick up on a lot of the tools and make connections with how it may help them in their classrooms in August. So I left the training this afternoon feeling really positive about the experience and looking forward to the upcoming follow-up sessions.

During the first day's session I asked the group to respond to the following question as it relates to this staff development: "What do you expect to learn?" I recorded their answers and pasted the results into Wordle (a tool which presents the text and emphasizes the frequently used words). I've included the result below. I was most impressed that many of the responses were less about what I could do for them and more about their desire to help students learn and their willingness to be learners themselves. That attitude of being willing and excited about learning really is much more important for a school's technology than any amount of equipment. If July is any indication, it should be a great year for many of the teachers and students at Bolton.