Words in a Cloud
Some Web 2.0 tools do one thing
but do it well. Wordle is one
of them. This free Web-based
tool creates word clouds from text.
These clouds, or visual representations
of text, give prominence to words
that appear more frequently in the
text. You can copy and paste any text
and make a word cloud out of it. As
you press the create button, there is a
magical moment when unwieldy text
is transformed into an image on the
screen. The larger words can help the
viewer quickly and easily identify the
main ideas in the text. You can also
enhance your word clouds by changing the font, layout, and colors.
When I first discovered Wordle, I
decided to share it with my middle
school students. We were discussing
the power of words and the power of
images. It seemed like a perfect fit. We
went to the Our Documents website
and created a word cloud out of the
Declaration of Independence. Then
I gave the assignment of choosing a
document from the 100 Milestone
Documents on the site. They loved
it. The conversations they were having were compelling. One student
chose the Gettysburg Address. He
said he decided to make the colors
gray because the text was about war,
and it was sad. Another student chose
Andrew Jackson’s Message to Congress On Indian Removal. She was
reading it over and commenting that
the words whites and civilized were
together and the words Indians and
savage were together. This sparked a
discussion about racism and the creation of our country. I could not get
By Samantha Morra
