How -To Tuesday - Wordle

Wordle is a fun, and visually appealing, web-based tool that you can use to help your students examine word choice. Wordle generates word clouds from text you provide, a url, or even a del.icio.us username's tags. The word cloud allows writers to see the words that are used most frequently throughout the text.

This tool can help students examine their own writing. Through an evaluation of their writing students can be encouraged to use words that will help in expressing their ideas clearly and help them choose words that will suit their intended audience.

Here are a few examples of how Wordle can be used.

This is the Wordle that I created of Educational Snippets Blog. By evaluating this Wordle, I can clearly see that I use the words "Bingo" and "words" frequently when writing blog posts. Now, I can make a goal for myself to choose alternative words instead of "words". I can also see that perhaps I have written a few too many posts about Bingo. :)


This Wordle below is a word cloud of my del.icio.us tags. You can get a quick glimpse of my interests by examining this Wordle. If my interests match yours you can decide of I am someone that you may want to have in your del.icio.us network.
This is a Wordle of a First Grade student's writing.

Here is the original piece: Let me tell you about persuasion. It is fun. It hard to do. You need to change someone's mind. Now you know more about persuasion.

Here is the Wordle:The student can examine this word cloud to see if there are any words that are used too frequently in this piece of writing.

What other ways could Wordle be used? How are you using Wordle in your classroom? Please leave a commnet!