Wordles

Hi All

Ben, Nic and Matt here. We have decided to work together to look at the educational value of Wordles. We are in the position where we all work at the same school so we have been able to trial this Web 2.0 tool on the children in our classes.

@http://wordle.net

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(I would insert a wordle here for you to look at but I still can't get files/images etc to attach to my wikis! Gotta love technology!)

What is a Wordle?
A wordle (or word cloud as it it otherwise known) is a free, easy to use tool that creates a 'word cloud'. To do this you either paste or type text into the programme and it will show the words which appear most frequently in your original text. It does not count the most common words in English language (such as the, is, a etc.) so your key words from your text are highlighted. Once you have done this, you can manipulate the font, layout and text to create your desired effect.

How is it Web 2.0 tool?
Because we are able to do more than just retrieve information, wordles are instantly a Web 2.0 tool. We are able to manipulate, share and collaborate using wordles. We can develop a number of our Key Competencies using this tool - Thinking and Using Language, Symbols and Texts primarily but we can also cover Managing Self, Relating to Others and Participating and Contributing depending on how you use the tool with the children.

Educational Benefits
As a group, we have used wordles in different ways. We will outline some of these below so that you can see the different uses of wordles.

As a Pre-Learning Activity
At the beginning of a numeracy or topic unit, I have used a wordle instead of creating a brainstorm. At the beginning of the day I set a computer up in my classroom with a question above it - for example; what do you know about shapes in maths. I have the computer on the wordle website and ask the children to find a time during the day to put in any words, phrases, sentences etc that they already know about the topic. I explain to the children that it doesn't matter if they use the same words as other students and if they don't know a lot about the topic area. One thing that you do have to make sure that you explain to the children well is that they should not 'create' the wordle, just leave the website as they found it when they began. At the end of the day, simply create the wordle and you have a creative way of presenting what prior knowledge the children have about your topic. This activity can be done at the end of the unit too and by comparing the product, you can see if their learning has shifted and increased.

As a Way of Sharing Thoughts and Feelings
As teachers in Christchurch, when the children came back to school after the recent Earthquake, we found this to be a great way of getting the children to share their thoughts and feelings in a non-threatening way. It would have been very easy to get the children to write a 'story' or 'description' of their earthquake experiences but we felt that the children would be a little cagey around what they shared with us in this manner. Instead, we got the children to write 20 to 30 words that they wanted to use to describe the earthquake. These could be physical descriptions, thoughts, feelings, things that they had experienced etc. They were then asked to copy and paste the words which they thought were most important. When they printed out their wordle, we all had a very clear idea of what different children experienced, and who was selecting words as important which might indicate that the child was in need of some TLC.

As a Self Assessment Activity
Similar to using as a class pre-learning activity, but children can type in words that they know about a topic of study at the beginning and end of the unit individually. The two wordles are then compared as a means of self-assessment.

As an Interesting Way to Present Goals
We have asked the children to copy and paste their goals into wordle and then printed out the product. These are then sent home to be put somewhere prominent. This gives the children a good visual reminder of what their goals for the term/year are in a key word format. It is also interesting for the childrens' parents to be able to see what their child has chosen to focus on and gives them a chance to be able to assist their learning at home.

As a Way to Build Up Vocabulary
Our school has a number of children who come from a non-English speaking background. We have used the programme to build up word lists and made mini dictionaries for the students to use. For example; we used the word hot and came up with all the synonyms we could for the word. This gave the children a new bank of words they could use when writing, and gave them a thesaurus to use when they came across a word they didn't know when reading.

As a New Way of Presenting Information in Statistics
One of the children in one of the classes we teach came up with the idea of using a wordle to present information in Statistics. He took a poll and instead of creating a graph to show information, he simply typed the information into wordle, using the word the number of times it was selected by the other children. He then printed out his wordle and the words were graded from largest to smallest according to how many children had selected - very creative we thought!

To Create a Card
One simple idea was to create a mothers day card using a wordle. The children typed in all the words they could think of to describe their mother and then printed out the wordle. This was then made into a card for their mother. A simple, but effective presentation.

Other Ideas
Here are a few websites which might help you to use wordles in a creative way: @http://www.slideshare.net/mberner/38-intersting-ways-to-use-wordle-in-the-classroom @http://www.slideshare.net/JenniferW/wordle-ideas @http://www.ideastoinspire.co.uk/wordle.htm

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