This week I'm going to focus on a very simple tool that has so much potential. It's called Wordle and it will take you exactly 30 seconds to learn how to use it (according to my own timed test with actual teachers!). In order to understand the power of Wordle, all you have to do is play with it for a few minutes to start to see the possibilities for your classroom.

Wordle is billed as a "toy" to make "beautiful word clouds." As a precursor to using the tool, you may want to first understand what "tag clouds" are and so I'll direct you to this Wikipedia article to get a better understanding. If you're a user of delicious or flickr, you're probably very familiar with "tag clouds" as you've examined your own tags. A "tag cloud" just represents your tags in a "cloud" of words, showing words that get used the most in the largest size or perhaps different color. Wordle differs from "tag clouds" in that the words will not be linked to anything (such as your bookmarks in delicious), but rather just a representation of the most used words, giving larger sizes to words that are used the most.

You have three options for entering words into Wordle. The first is to simply "paste in a bunch of text." There's an empty box for this and you can fit quite a bit of text into it. I'm not sure of it's limit, but I've put the entire text to Moby Dick, and Wordle didn't even flinch. The second way to enter text (and my favorite) is to give Wordle a URL or RSS address. And the final method is to simply point Wordle to a delicious account (delicious already offers a scaled down "tag cloud," however, and while not as pretty as Wordle, this is a bit redundant). Once text is entered, you watch it build the "word cloud" right before your eyes. You're able to set your desired fonts and colors and even can manipulate the layout of the words somewhat (horizontal and vertical options). Once Wordle's finished (which takes a few seconds), you can print it out or save it to your computer (I suggest saving it as a "PostScript" file so that you can print it at any size without any loss of quaility). Wordle can strip out common usage words so you won't see a word like "The" overtaking the page and you can set the maximum number of "top words" to appear on the page (by default it's set at 150).

Here are a few scenarios that I've come up with for using Wordle in the classroom:

1. Put in the text to an entire book (as I did with Moby Dick). Don't tell students what the book is and use it as a "pre-activator" before reading the book ("What do you think this book will be about?").
2. Alternatively, do the same thing after students read a book and use the Wordle to reflect upon major themes or connections or relationships between the different words that appear. When putting Romeo and Juliet into Wordle, for instance, a wonderful conversation can be had when students analyze that "Romeo's" name will appear much larger than "Juliet's." 
3. Use the RSS feed option to put in the feed from Google News. Print this Wordle out each morning for your students and have them return to Google News to research why certain words are showing up. For instance, on the day I write this, the word "Phoenix" is quite large in the Wordle. I would ask my students: "What's happening in Phoenix that's making the news?" Students could also find connections between the words in the news stories they research.
4. Put the RSS feed from your blog or your students' blogs in to analyze what you've been writing about. Students could do this at the end of the year and use the Wordle as a topic generator for a final reflection on their year, or after 4 years of a high school blog, they could use the Wordle to prepare for their college essay introducing themselves. 
5. Use Wordle to analyze a piece of writing. I know one teacher who said, "I actually did this with my writing and found out I use the word 'actually' too much."

For more ideas and a visual tutorial, head over to my own blog where I've posted a short video. Please leave comments of ways you're using Wordle in the classroom!

Bob Sprankle has been a multi-age teacher in Wells, ME for 10 years and has served as the school's Technology Integrator for the past two years.

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