Wordle

I just received my first issue of the CUE magazine, CUE is "Computer-Using Educators" basically California teachers using educational technology.

There is an article on "free" software, which I'll talk about another time. Presently, I'd like to pass on some ideas from an article about Wordle: Creating Word Clouds on Your Computer, by Lynell Burmark.

One technical tip - She made a word list in MS Word then did a Copy/Paste into the box in the Advanced section of the Wordle website. She writes that the numbers - indicating size - next to the words are more art than science, but for regular printing anything less than 600 is too small. For poster-size prints, you can have smaller than 600 because the print itself will be so much larger.

Now for some educational tips.

One idea was to create a Wordle of important words, words to know, etc., as a pre-exercise - before reading a selection, before watching a video. The same Wordle could be used for later discussion, or as a way to recall.

Another idea was to make Wordles of the Dolch Words. She writes: Because the brain thrives on making connections (and because the connecting 'glue' makes learning memorable and 'sticky'), the most effective Dolch Wordles would be ones where the words were grouped in some meaningful manner.

That thought would probably apply as well to other kinds of Wordles.

If you have a Projector and a Whiteboard, the Wordles would be especially useful.