Word+Clouds

Word Clouds are created by entering a paragraph or more of text into a "word cloud generator," such as the free generator at @http://www.wordle.net. The generator produces an aggregation of the most frequently used words in the text. Those words that are used the most frequently are produced in a bigger font, thus allowing the viewer to immediately see which concepts have the greatest prominence in the source text.

For example, a word cloud I just generated from a description of Piaget looks like this:



You can see that the most important concepts in Piaget's theory, such as the word "objects," jump right out at you!

How have you used word clouds in your classroom?

1. Philosophy Statements When I ask students to write a statement of their teaching philosophy, or a similar piece of writing, I also ask them to use the text to generate a word cloud at www.wordle.net. The resulting word cloud gives students a visual summary of what they have written--one that is often more powerful to them than the written statement. Students can post the word cloud on the wall of their own classroom or in another prominent place to remind themselves of the position they have taken. It is also interesting to compare word clouds written at the beginning of a student's educational program with a word cloud generated on the same topic at the end of their studies.