Wordle+Training

=​Wordle Training= =Spring 2010=

What is Wordle???
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

www.wordle.net

IDEAS FOR USING WORDLE IN THE CLASSROOM
Economics - Adam Smith - what's important in the economy at this time? (1776) Historical speeches - cut and paste text into box Summarize and show me main ideas - omit common words - can also remove words helps visual learner who has trouble reading Current event topic - dump article - 60 second presentation - used wordle to get main ideas Mein kampf - what is Hitler's point? audience? Hamlet - preview - who will be main characters? Prereading - dump text - largest words are vocab words Presidential speeches - who's speech is this based on text?

Language Arts Wordle:

media type="custom" key="5703003"

Comparing Inaugural Speeches by Presidents Obama and Bush:



Key Training Points
I. Four ways to create: a. Students generate list 1. Review most important topics/points 2. Characteristics of a person in a story b. Cut and paste text from website, online book or notes c. URL, blog, or RSS feed d. Delicious user II. Advanced settings a. Paper tally - write text with number of "votes" next to each word b. Paper tally with color codes III. Gallery - see what other people have created IV. Credits - background of creator V. News - latest Wordle updates VI. Forum - discussion area VII. FAQ

Additional Tips:
Place a tilda ~ between words that go together. Ex. Williams~Valley You cannot add to a Wordle that is already created. You may cut and paste text if you saved it in a word document when you created to original.

You //can// use a Wordle to make book covers, posters or t-shirts to sell!! [] Be sure to follow copyright laws: tell people how you made the image, or, if you're using one from the gallery, where you got it. If you use a screen-capture, PDF, or other image representation of a Wordle, you must attribute the image to [].