Friday, September 28, 2012

The Educational Value of Wordle



What is Wordle?
Wordle is an internet based tool that creates “word clouds” from text pasted into the tool.  The directions say to paste a passage into the box.  The more frequently a word is used, the larger it appears on the Wordle.  It could be used as a guessing game where students create a list of key words, put them into a Wordle and then post their Wordle somewhere where classmates could try to guess the topic. Wordle can also be used for brainstorming while  collaborating on an idea for a project  – add words as many times as they are suggested by individuals to see which ideas are more popular.  Wordle also gives students a chance to be creative, by selecting the colors and layout schemes. Another use could be to help identify appropriate websites for research projects.  Cut and paste the text from a website into the tool and see how often the topic they are looking for shows up.  In her blog, It’s a Mad, Mad Wordle, Carolyn Foote (2009) suggests using it to analyze students’ writing, by pasting their papers into Wordle to see how often different words were used, indicating a possible need to use a thesaurus.  Foote also suggests putting comments from interviews or polls into Wordle to “see what ideas float to the top as significant” (Foote, 2009).

References:  
It’s a Mad, Mad Wordle. School Library Journal, 07/01/2009. Retrieved from:            http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6666671.html)