30 Days of Web tools: #6: Make Wordclouds using Wordle or Tagxedo

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">What are Wordclouds?</span></b><br /><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Wordclouds are such fun to use in the classroom, especially when it comes to vocabulary building. Basically, using a wordcloud application one can transfer words into a cloud of interconnected words that can be arranged and used in different ways. Users can change the layout, color scheme, and fonts. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Students love working with wordclouds.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Two very popular free wordcloud webtools are Wordle and Tagxeedo, and I am going to explain each below plus give ideas of how to use them in the classroom</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>1. Wordle</b></span> (<a href="http://wordle.net/">http://wordle.net</a>) <br /><br /><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Wordle is an online tool for creating word clouds from passages of text. The more frequently a word appears in the text, the larger it shows up in the word cloud. It has so many amazing uses which you will enjoy experimenting with.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcbV_Hqwa9zR6q6kNjwNI8xnPlKaby49Rejys5kO1iSiX2Mehre4heO1kyVPSFLd_xXSS-3UT7UHcmhGFe6ff8H8TTnftKIXhglguTMYLebLQRfnGUQ9SJ0UqNtoBqa9ty79RYxTpFffY/s1600-h/image%25255B3%25255D.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="image" border="0" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFJ4I-zLoyqjXsgCTnywJxYnAkKvGeBagq-fqV38TzkLH_x5EZllB0Glpr4NB-_UWqGNcBYQsu8cXpMj2P26mLPobL67QYaYuSb7GJ1pcppHrrSL8w7G_Euu2kpWtkBBmDjC6xlZdBhDw/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; display: inline; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Taken from Ted Teachers’ network (<a href="http://tedteachersnetwork.pbworks.com/">http://tedteachersnetwork.pbworks.com</a>)</span> </td></tr></tbody></table><b style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></b><b arial="arial" background-color:="" font-family:="" font-size:="" helvetica="helvetica" neue="neue" sans-serif="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, <b style=;" white="white" x-large="x-large"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">How to use Wordle step-by-step</span></b><br /><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />This is a great introductory video from Radford Education to show you how to sign up for and use Wordle. </span></div></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1J-s68cO7-A" width="420"></iframe><br /><br /><b><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">How can Wordle be used in the classroom? </span></b><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">There are so many ways to use Wordle that several educators have been collecting ideas. I will post two of these collections below. </span><br /><div id="__ss_1512878" style="width: 427px;"><b style="display: block; margin: 12px 0px 4px;"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/JenniferW/wordle-ideas" target="_blank" title="Wordle Ideas">Wordle Ideas</a></b> <iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="356" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/1512878" style="border-bottom: #ccc 0px solid; border-left: #ccc 1px solid; border-right: #ccc 1px solid; border-top: #ccc 1px solid;" width="427"></iframe> <br /><div style="padding-bottom: 12px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">View more PowerPoint from <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/JenniferW" target="_blank">ProjectsByJen.com</a> </div></div><br /><div id="__ss_7263899" style="width: 427px;"><b style="display: block; margin: 12px 0px 4px;"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/gholtam/50-ways-to-use-wordle-in-the-classroom" target="_blank" title="50 ways to use Wordle in the classroom">50 ways to use Wordle in the classroom</a></b> <iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="356" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/7263899" style="border-bottom: #ccc 0px solid; border-left: #ccc 1px solid; border-right: #ccc 1px solid; border-top: #ccc 1px solid;" width="427"></iframe> <br /><div style="padding-bottom: 12px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">View more PowerPoint from <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/gholtam" target="_blank">Gemma Holtam</a> </div></div><b style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">2. Tagxeedo</span></b><br /><b><a href="http://www.tagxedo.com/">http://www.tagxedo.com/</a></b><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Tagxeedo is an online wordcloud tool that takes things a step further by providing a number of different <i>shapes</i> you can choose from for your words. You can also upload a picture you like and Tagxeedo uses it as an outline. </span><br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxcVEsA9avLJubeOIxQwh1GLRHO6tD51Hl_tCrhh6x1bpbszXuUJr36Plh6k2LTa9S6ZKZg70Z-DOv3hnDULFgdI3383RkdkBGIIhKv8cgwqpTWHG5hSxAl2AI8h1i5x0gzdU79JLtbkE/s1600-h/image%25255B6%25255D.png" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="image" border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaR024LR_WmurhU9KJHM6WTvxxvYeJ9ZAAuJResNrIaKckf955V_XL1iYG3-QkzF1hw2sk3vqCokeeR0JgF42KWbtMA7zEdKUwxIubuxljvmgM-wh9Rao9VFqUNoZdpqQGHSLFw3TOCY0/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; display: inline; margin: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="372" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">From the Tagxeedo blog (<a href="http://daily.tagxedo.com/">http://daily.tagxedo.com/</a>)</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><br /></div><b style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">How to use Tagxeedo</span></b><br /><div><div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This video gives the basic steps in using Tagxedo. Take a look.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6ZwVoqFP-NE?rel=0" width="420"></iframe> <div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div><br /><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: large;">How can Tagxedo be used in the classroom?</span></b></div></div><br /><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As with Wordle, there are many ways to use Tagxeedo. Here is a slideshow showing a whole collection of ideas from the Tagxedo blog.</div><br /><div id="__ss_7994718" style="width: 427px;"><b style="display: block; margin: 12px 0px 4px;"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/sandiadams/101-ways-to-use-tagxedo" target="_blank" title="101 Ways to Use Tagxedo">101 Ways to Use Tagxedo</a></b> <iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="356" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/7994718" style="border-bottom: #ccc 0px solid; border-left: #ccc 1px solid; border-right: #ccc 1px solid; border-top: #ccc 1px solid;" width="427"></iframe> <br /><div style="padding-bottom: 12px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">View more PowerPoint from <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/sandiadams" target="_blank">sandiadams</a> </div></div><br /><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>More ways of using wordclouds in the classroom</b></span><br /><br /><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1. Introduce a topic via vocabulary and use a word cloud to arrange this. You can then get the students to guess the theme, identify unknown words and make sentences with words.</span><span style="background-color: white;"><br />2. For pre-reading tasks. You could show students a collection of words from the new text and let them predict what the text is about.</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">3. Speed sentence writing. Use recent vocabulary for this and let the students write as many sentences as they can using the words in the word cloud. </span><span style="background-color: white;"><br />4. This is a good fun activity. Display a word cloud containing some recently covered vocabulary and tell the students they have x minutes to write as many sentneces as they can using the words on display. This works best in pairs or groups and is a great way to review and recycle language. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: small;"><br />5</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: small;">. Guess the wordle idea:</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: small;">Three times a week <a href="http://guessthewordle.pbworks.com/">Guess the Wordle</a> will post a new Wordle. Then based on the Wordle students can guess what the topic of the Wordle is. Guess the Wordle could be a fun warm-up activity to use with students. <a href="http://projectsbyjen.com/GTW/">http://projectsbyjen.com/GTW/</a></span><span style="background-color: white;"><br />6. Analyse writing: </span><span style="background-color: white;">Students can enter all their text into a wordcloud and see which words come out the largest due to being used frequently. One could analyse text from website articles in the same way.</span><br /><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div><b><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Further reading</span></b> <br /><b><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></b><a href="http://www.edutopia.org/blog/new-teacher-boot-camp-wordle-lisa-dabbs">http://www.edutopia.org/blog/new-teacher-boot-camp-wordle-lisa-dabbs</a><br /><a href="http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/07/more-wordle-in-classroom-ideas.html">http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/07/more-wordle-in-classroom-ideas.html</a><br /><a href="http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/06/more-wordle-ideas.html">http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/06/more-wordle-ideas.html</a><br /><a href="http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/07/guess-wordle-and-summer-vacation.html">http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/07/guess-wordle-and-summer-vacation.html</a><br /><a href="http://groups.diigo.com/group/wordle">http://groups.diigo.com/group/wordle</a><br /><br /></div>

30 days of web tools Tagxeedo Web tools Wordle 30 Days of Web tools: #6: Make Wordclouds using Wordle or Tagxedo

What are Wordclouds? Wordclouds are such fun to use in the classroom, especially when it comes to vocabulary building. Basically, using a wo...

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