As you can see from above, it is just a bunch of words created by this tool. There is nothing really complicated. It can be a piece of artwork, can be a reminder of memories and can also potentially be a means for ELT.
What is Wordle?
The program is a free and user-friendly program that allows people to create "Word Clouds". It is an image made of words where the word sizing is based on the frequency of the word appeared in the source given. It allows users to save and print the picture just by clicking the buttons. If you like your own cloud, you can even save and share to the Wordle community so that everyone can appreciate it. There is a forum for Wordle users to create a community sharing their works and solving encountered problems while using the program. FAQ section is also included on the website to answer the common requests from the users.
Creating your own Word Clouds!
First of all, you just need to go to the Wordle website and click on the Create button. No sign up and installation is needed. Once you are on the Create page, there are only two options,
pasting texts or entering URL of any website with RSS feed or Atom, for you to make up your own picture.
Here is a tutorial recorded by me with the Screencast-O-Matic I introduced before ;)
Ideas of utilizing Wordle in ELT
1. Creating a word game with Wordle
Students will be assigned into groups of 4 to 6 and ready to compete against other group members to be the quickest to hunt the words. Each group will be distributed the same word cloud sheet and different coloured pens to represent each group member. Teachers, thereby try to describe one of the words in the picture or even tell a story mainly about the chosen word. The purpose is to allow students to picturize the word and find out it among the "clouds"
2. Reminder of useful words
After completing an English class, students must have understood various new vocabulary items from the reading. Teachers can fully utilize the application asking students to turn their new words learnt into a word cloud so that students can memorize the words with visual stimulation.
3. Understanding the theme and main content of a reading
When a paragraph is typed into the site, the size of different words increases with the frequency appeared. As a result, teachers can first guide students to discover the reading's topics/themes at the pre-reading phase (Usually the more frequently appeared words should be the topics/themes!). Once the students figure out the expression from the writer, they will be able to understand the whole content easier.
Things to concern
1. Google Chrome not supported
The site uses Java to create the Word Clouds for its users. However, Google Chrome is not longer supporting the NPAPI plugins, which is a cross-platform plugin architecture, affecting the Applets to interact with the browser.
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| Working on Safari |
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| Not working on Google Chrome (Java not supported) |
2. Dumb Interface and Monotonous Operation
Clicking into the website at the first sight, I have an impression of plain and cost-saving design which does not really attract people for further discovery. Also, the options from the customization menu are limited. After a few times of Word Cloud creation, I believe students won't be interested in receiving more meaningful expressions from the Cloud.
3. Technical error on URL choice
After several trials with blogs and websites with RSS feeds, it still stayed in the Create page and nothing had been loading. I think it should be a bug that the site administrator should fix it as soon as possible.
4. Shape-Filling Constraint
The word cloud created is randomized in shape. Although the shape can be formatted just a little bit, it is not possible to change into a designated shape, such as a heart shape. There are alternatives that provide custom shapes but with a more complicated layout menu, like Tagxedo.
5. Failure of showing examples
I have tried to open the examples provided on the site with both Safari and Google Chrome. There was a pop-up window showing a Java unexpected error every time.
Sources
https://www.java.com/en/download/faq/chrome.xml
http://www.techlearning.com/default.aspx?tabid=100&entryid=274
http://www.tagxedo.com
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