Lately I’ve blogged a lot on technology applications in the classroom. From texts to Twitter, YouTube to machinima, I have focused on a variety of applications that have potential in pedagogy. One web application I would love to incorporate into a lesson plan is Wordle. You can find it here:
http://www.wordle.net/
Visit the site; play around; use a paper written for a class to see what the results are. Wordle creates word clouds based on the text users input. The clouds are based on the frequency with which the data uses certain words. Words that are used often are made to stand out more; users of Wordle can alter the style of the word clouds: changing fonts, colors, layout, etc. Besides a really fancy tech-savvy way to bolster a PowerPoint, this application can help visual learners map their key ideas.
Instead of rereading a paper, outlining a thesis and topic sentences, graphing the trajectory of the paper, students can copy-paste their essays into Wordle and see what words they’re using most often. The implications of this are numerous: students can see which words they are repeating most often. If non-key terms appear large, the student may want to consider revising the essay with the notion to whittle those repetitions down; if key terms come up big, the student can compare which of those terms seem most important based on frequency and see if it aligns with the important words they wanted to use.
But those are just a couple examples; the benefits don’t end at editing. Students can analyze the rhetoric of a popular essay by using the essay as the data for Wordle’s word clouds. Instead of asking them to write an essay based on Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” imagine what fun results pedagogues and students would come up with when they analyzed Wordle’s interpretation of Swift’s famous essay.
Viewing language as an art can be a difficult concept to convey, and Worlde can help. Students can step outside what they feel is stagnant text while staying within the confines of the course goals and aims of the discipline.
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Cody, you are brilliant! Perhaps astute in finding helpful technology is more accurate...
ReplyDeleteI just spend 10 minutes using the Find function in Word 2003 on one of my student's essay. She had used "was" 15 times on 2 1/2 pages of test: too much passive voice. I did the same exercise with the word "this" on her paper, and I highlighted those words so she could see where she needed to make changes. I do not have time to do this for all of my students. By using Wordle, I can have them find their own errors. Yippee!
Also I like the idea of analyzing an essay using Wordle. I haven't assigned "A Modest Proposal" yet so I will give it a try and let you know how it went.
I love stealing other teachers' ideas!