Doodle The Wordle

Here comes the rival for WordSift. Wordle is another fun tool that creates word clouds from text that users provide.

Link: http://www.wordle.net/

 

General Description

Wordle is a web tool that allows users to create word clouds (a graphic representation of the most frequently used words in a blog, website, or plain text). Similar to the function of word clouds in the WordSift, the largest words in the clouds are ones that are used the most in the text, and the smallest words are used the least. Contrasted to WordSift, the clouds in the Wordle are created not by only entering a text, but also by entering a URL or a del.icio.us user name into a field provided on the site. To get started, simply go to the website. Click on ‘Create’ and type or paste in the text into the empty box, and then click ‘Go’. Within seconds, the finished Wordle will appear in the box. Another point that makes it greater than WordSift is that users may click on font, layout, and colour near the top of the Wordle to change those things. The users may also click ‘Randomize’ at the bottom for Wordle to randomly select another design. The Wordle can then be saved and added to the public gallery. The Wordle can also be printed out and embedded into blog to be shared with others. The following is an example of Wordle word clouds that I created using the same text from WordSift. So that you can spot the difference between the two word clouds. The text can be read here. 

Level and Age

Wordle is an easy-to-use tool, understandable, and the content to be used with it can be controlled by the users. Therefore, it is suitable to be applied for students at all levels of English proficiency, and it can be utilized by both students at primary and secondary schools ranging from the age of 9-17 years old. Nevertheless, it can also be beneficial to be used by adult learners to enhance their English proficiency.

How To Use Wordle For Teaching English?

Peachy (2008) has suggested a few ways of using the tool with students:

1. Revision of texts: Teacher can paste the short texts that students have studied recently. Show them the word cloud and see if they can remember what the text was about and how the words were used within the text. Teacher can also see if the students can rewrite or reconstruct the text based on the word cloud. 
2. Prediction: Teacher creates word clouds of texts before students read or listen, and ask them to make predictions about the content of the text based on the word cloud. They can also check any new words from the word cloud that they are unsure of before they read or listen.
3. Dialogue reconstruction: Teacher creates a word cloud of a dialogue students are studying and use it as a prompt to remember or reconstruct the dialogue. 
4. Short poems/Haiku: Teacher can generate a word cloud from a short poem or Haiku, and then ask students to create their own work based on the word cloud. The students can then see how close they came to the original.
5. Text Comparison: Teacher creates word clouds from a number of text genres (new article, poem, story, advertisement, dialogue, etc.) and then sees if the students can decide which genre each from and why. Teacher can also do this with a small collection of poems, short stories or articles. Then, students can read the complete texts and match them to the word clouds.

Evaluation

Advantages:

1. It is free, quick, and easy. Users don’t need to register or part with an email address so it’s low risk site to get students using. 
2. It appeals to the different learning styles of the students. The word clouds are very attractive and will stimulate more visual learners and language smart students.
3. Scaffolding language learning. The key word prompts is a great way to support more fluent language production, but avoids having students just reading the text. 
4. Freedom of choice: It’s great that teachers and students can customize the design and choose colours and fonts that they like.

Disadvantages:

1. Wordle is not ‘policed’ for content, so it’s possible that younger students could find inappropriate content if they search the gallery images. 
2. Besides, users cannot save the Wordle directly as an image though they can save it to the online gallery or print it out. Hence, the only solution users can do for preserving the Wordle as an image is by taking a screenshot and then edit that using image editing software.
3. The word cloud produced by Wordle might contain words that users don’t like or even need them. Thus, this would be distracting. The solution for this is to delete the words, but even so, careful observation from teachers is still needed.

Reference:

Peachy, N. (2008). Using Word Clouds in ESL EFL. Nik’s Learning Technology Blog. [blog]. <Available at: http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/2008/09/using-word-clouds-in-efl-esl.html> [Accessed 15 November 2011].