Reach into the Toolbox #4
Wordle allows you to create “word clouds” from text that you provide: just copy and paste some text into the text box and press Go!
Wordle uses the number of times a word appears in a text to determine its relative size – the more frequent the word, the larger it appears. Once the wordle has been created you can then alter its layout, font, and colour.
Wordle is a public website and displays creations from the public on its homepage. You can save your own wordcloud into the public gallery to look at later or you can print straight from the page. You can’t save your wordle as an image file straight from the website however you CAN screenshot the wordle, paste it into a Word document, crop out the bits that you don’t need and then save it appropriately.
How can it be used in the classroom? Tom Barrett has collaborated with other teachers and created a slideshow entitled “52 Interesting Ways to use Wordle in the classroom“. This is an excellent source from which to gather your ideas together and is definitely worth a read.
Some alternatives to Wordle which deserve a mention are: Tagxedo, Worditout and Tagul. All are versions of the same thing although Tagul requires you to sign up before you can use it.
More from us next week
Claire
