WORDLE

DISCO BALL:  Thank you so much to all of the sponsors this year.  I am ready to DISCO for TECHNO.  We have already set a record for sponsonships.  Let's see if we can set a record for attendance.  I hope to see you there.

Item of the day:  WORDLE

http://www.wordle.net/

Wordle is a tool for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide (notice my profile picture). The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

Let's play a game.... can you guess what famous document the words shown in the WORDLE below are from?

How about this one?

And this one??

Last one....

Ok....Ok.. The first one is the US CONSTITUTION  The second one is the GETTYSBURG ADDRESS. The third one is the 2010 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS.  Whoever can guess the title of the last one and e-mail me the fastest will be the WORDLE winner.  I will announce your success on the next blog posting.

Creating a WORDLE is simple and fun.  I created a few to hangup in the computer labs around campus with our CORE VALUES.  They have been good conversation starters.  Since WORDLES can not be saved as images, I took a screen shot (by pressing the print screen button on the keyboard) and then pasted the image into PUBLISHER onto a poster size document.  I then cropped out the unwanted part of the image.  Finally, I printed the poster out, laminated it, and ZAM - instant WORDLE on the WALL. 

Wordle does not understand multiple words such as Harry Potter. This can be very annoying at times as Harry Potter will be recorded as two single words. You can get around this by joining words.
EX: Harry-Potter, Harry~Potter, Harry_Potter or HarryPotter.

In the classroom, wouldn't this be a great lead-in activity for the lesson of the day?  It could also be a fun and easy assignment.  Every creation is different.  The students can use vocabulary terms, poetry stanza, literature text, song lyrics, etc.... the possibilities are endless.

If you create a WORDLE, please share it with me.  I would love to see what you or your students have done.