Wordle - Check it Out

Thanks again to all of you who continue to read my Technology and Teaching blog! I am having fun keeping it.

This post I want to encourage you to try Wordle.  Wordle is another free service available for us to use in the classroom.  It is an online tool you can use to create "thought clouds" or "word clouds".   You can check out an example of one I made for my Technology and Teaching class.  It literally took me moments to make and it produces a very creative result.   You can also check out other provided examples at the Wordle website.

The tool is very intuitive to use, making it very user friendly.  Users either type or copy/paste words into the Wordle generator.  The more often the word is provided, the bigger or more prominent the word becomes in your final product.  After you see the final result, you can click the 'randomize' button to change font color, size, font type and background color.  The final product can be printed, saved, or shared with others online.

This would be a great tool to have your students use for a presentation, in providing synopsis of a chapter or text, or any other number of uses.  As a teacher, I think it would be great to have all your students names pulled up on the overhead in a Wordle creation on the first day of school.  Think about how excited they would be to see their names on a Wordle creation, especially younger students!  For those of you followers who have already used Wordle, I would love to hear in what ways you have used it in the classroom.

Have a great week and I will be back again next week! Don't forget to check out Some Silly Monkeys for an update.