Wordle

Wordle is one of my favorite sites to share with teachers. The idea is so simple, but there are so many applications. Wordle creates "word art" from any text you choose. You can manipulate fonts, colors, styles and layouts of the text. Paste a chunk of text into the application and Wordle will create a design in which the words appear larger or smaller, depending on their frequency of use in the pasted text. You can publish your creations to a public gallery and/or print them out.

How can you use Wordle in your classroom?

1. Have students paste in their original poetry.

2. Have students paste in their original poetry to determine what words are being "over-used."

3. Have students create autobiographical, visual poems by pasting in their names along with adjectives which describe them. Wordle lets you manipulate the text so you can, for instance, repeat some words more than others (like your name) so they appear larger.

3. Have students paste in text from political speeches, etc. to get a visual of the rhetoric used in the speaker's message (remember, the more a word is used, the larger it appears). Try Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" or Bush's "9/11 Speech."