Wordle+Review

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** Wordle **[|**http://www.wordle.net**]


 * The Tool and How it Works **

Wordle is a tool for generating word clouds from text that is provided by the user. You generate a source text and you can associate increased importance of a word by typing it more time than other words.



Wordle is easily customizable to use different fonts, layouts, and color themes. Once you create a word cloud in Wordle it belongs to the individual who created it and they are fee to use it how they want. This online application was primarily created using the Java2D API. Once you create a word cloud using Wordle you can do anything you want with that image you can post it onto a blog or website or you can put it onto a poster. You are allowed to even make money using the designs that you could create. In order to get your word cloud design you could either do a printscreen of the document and save it to your desired location or you could embed a link to the document within your desired medium. While Wordle is a powerful tool with many great applications it does have some limitations. After you create your word cloud you cannot export it as a given file type. This causes problems because sometimes you need it in a specific format with a specific resolution. There is no way to get your image at any resolution higher than 72, so if you decide to use this image in a print document it could get pixilated and blurry. I feel like this is a major downfall because the images that Wordle generates appear to be Vector yet we cannot get them like that instead the only way we can get them is in raster. The gallery on the website also features some entries that are inappropriate. The administrator has made a concerted effort not to include any of the ones that are inappropriate on the homepage, but he doesn’t restrict the ones in the gallery.


 * How it Can be Used **

· Interpret a famous speech – Students could read or listen to a famous speech and record keywords while listening or reading. They could insert those keywords into Wordle and give prominence to the words that are most important to the central meaning of the speech. · Compile a list of vocabulary words for a unit – They could then take this vocabulary list of words and put them into Wordle making the words that they have the most trouble remembering the largest. They could instead also highlight the words that are most important within that to you. · Keep track of an individual’s diet – You could have students track and monitor the foods that they eat each day of the week. As they inputted these words into Wordle the foods that they ate the most would be the largest. So they could quickly see what foods they ate the most of. · Condense an article down into its essence – Students could read and an article and figure out the most important pieces. Students would then determine the central meaning of the message and decide on what is important. They could then insert this into Wordle and present that information to the rest of the class. · Establish classroom rules together – Have each student in the class compose a set of rules for the classroom. Compile all these rules and put them into Wordle and then you could look at the visual representation and see which rules are valued the most by the whole class.