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Word Clouds

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Start with Tom Barretts Forty-Four Interesting Ways* to use Wordle in the Classroom. Check out Shelly Terrells 12 Word Cloud Resources, Tips, & Tools. Marisa Constantinides has another great post with word cloud examples. Phil Bradley also has a nice post comparing word cloud apps. Michael Gorman has a great post with a lengthy title: I Can Back Off My Blogging, Turn Down My Tweeting, And Even Wrap Up My Wiki, But I Cant Wane My Wordling. At the bottom of that post you can also nd links to several other Wordle-related posts he has written. Michael Gorman has a great post with a lengthy title: I Can Back Off My Blogging, Turn Down My Tweeting, And Even Wrap Up My Wiki, But I Cant Wane My Wordling. At the bottom of that post you can also nd links to several other Wordle-related posts he has written.

Learning With Computers, the excellent online global community of ESL/EFL teachers exploring how to effectively use technology with students, has this months activity focused on using word clouds with students. Check-out the wiki lled with examples, and contribute your own. Tagxedo is a new and neat word cloud generator. The creator of Wordle calls it not so much an alternative to Wordle as much as Wordle the next generation. Russell Stannard from Teacher Training Videos has just made a how to video on creating and using different Word Cloud generators. He also has written a good post titled What Is A Word Cloud? War Words is an interesting interactive from The Wall Street Journal. It shows word clouds to illustrate how U.S. Presidents have spoken about the Iraq War since 2003. Im including it in this post as an example of how they can be used. The Answer Garden is an intriguing combination of a survey tool and a word cloud generator. Without requiring any registration, it lets you pose a question to which people can write their own short answers. The answers appear as a word cloud below the question, with the words changing in size based on how often they are used in responses. Responders have the option of writing in their own answer or clicking on one of the words already in the word cloud. The entire garden can be embedded in a blog or website, and you can also link to it. The fact that anybody can answer anything to the question without identifying themselves makes it problematic to say the least in many school settings. But in certain mature situations, it could be very useful. Free Tools Challenge #10: Word clouds with Wordle comes from Edublogs. Type in a user name into Tweet Topic Explorer and youll get a multi-colored word cloud in bubbles. Using Wordles To Teach Foreign Language Writing is a useful study. Summer PD: New Teacher Boot Camp Week 1 Using Wordle comes from Edutopia. Word clouds considered harmful is an interesting post from the Nieman Journalism Lab. HTML5 Word Cloud: Text Analyzer is from Devalyne Britt via Laura Gibbs.

Jason Davies has developed a new interactive world cloud generator that lets you use Twitter, Wikipedia or a URL address.

The Assignment
1. Using Wordle create an image that describes you! Minimum of 25 words, but the more words the better, the more words you use, the more interesting your design will be. 2. Take a screen capture (picture) of your design, this will give you an image that can be added to your website. Instructions for how make a screen capture at on the Help & Tutorial page. 3. Now make a SECOND Fun with Text project, using Tagexdo, OR Tagul OR WordItOut or one of the tools mentioned in the resources above or from the options listed on the Fun with Text page from the resources on the Technology Keys Wiki. 4. The topic for this second image you are making should be about teaching OR education OR school OR technology OR teachers OR your content area, OR....???? Something or anything related to education. 5. Take a screen capture of your second design, this will give you another image that will be added to the SAME post/place on your website. 6. Write a reection to go with the 2 images. How you think you could use these types of tools in your classroom, make sure your reection has at least one specic curriculum idea and show both the images your made along with the reection. Title: Fun with Text-Word Clouds
A couple App possibilities (there may be others, do some hunting and share in your reection what you nd. Word Clouder: .99, http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/word-clouder/id334680276?mt=8 WordFoto: $1.99 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wordfoto/id414002091?mt=8