Wordle
One of the ways that web developers try to get you to view the content of their resource before you ever start reading is through visualization. For example, there's my visualization of content on the opening page of every newsletter. I use the concept of a tag cloud where I take all of the words that appear in each edition and create a cloud which illustrates the frequency of the words that you'll find if you read the newsletter from cover to cover. And, after all, who wouldn't? I use Tag Crowd to create this visualization.
Another such service that you'll find on the internet is called Wordle. it's web based and very simple to use. I created a Wordle in a class that I was in over the summer. Quite frankly, it is boring by what you'll see later. I decided to pay tribute to great teachers that I had over the years. I figured that if I remembered their names years later, that they would have made some sort of impact on me. My effort appears below.
I was pleased with myself and thought that this was so good and creative. After all, I had two Jewsons as teachers and so they appear larger. To put the title "Teachers" into the middle of the Wordle, I just type the word a few times to increase its frequency.
Then, I was at the Vision to Practice Conference with co-presenter Lise Fellbaum from Gosfield North. She was talking about an activity for students using the SMART Board in their word study activity. She created a Wordle with "ight" words. The students had to identify the words. To make it a challenge, she used the features of Wordle to create distractions so that the students had to focus in on their search. So cool. It's not just a "One of" activity. The concept can be easily replicated and is great for review. Put the Wordle up and have students ready with their markers.
Then we go even further. At J.E. Benson, teacher-librarian Kelly Moore is teaching students all about the Dewey Decimal system. Now, I'm sure that Dewey was important at one time but I'll never tell you why. It was presented to me as a simple rote skill to be master before a test, never to be revisited again.
But, put this learning in the context of a great activity, and I might just have learned all about it. Such an activity was crafted with Wordle.
In this activity, the Grade 6 students each took a part of the stacks and looked for the type of books that would be found in each of the hundreds' categories. Once they've identified the books, they're off to Wordle to visualize it. The 700s, for example, is where you'll find sports and the arts. As a Wordle, this is what it looks like.
I can't help but think that had I done this activity when in school, I might actually have remembered it!
Extending the task further, the Grade 5 students created Voki commercials to give yet another explanation of what you'll find in the various sections of the resource centre. I'll bet these classes remember Dewey far longer than I ever did.
All this creativity makes my original offering even more humble!
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