Visual+Representations+with+Text

Word Clouds

 * [|Wordle]creates word clouds.**

Here is a **Wordle** created from the text of a letter written by Ralph Waldo Emerson to President Martin VanBuren, addressing the injustices being experienced by the Cherokee nation during the time period around the Trail of Tears. Visit the Cherokee Nation Site for a wealth of primary sources.
 * Idea** - create Wordles of several of the documents and compare the key words and concepts for prereading, postreading, writing prompts, etc


 * Idea** for world language educators is to take a reading in the target language, paste the text into Wordle, thus creating a word cloud of the high frequency words for the text selection. Here is a Wordle based on [|an article from El País] Imagine the current unit of study is healthy living. In //El País// newspaper (Spain) an article about a new kind of electric bike was published. The teacher would like to use the article with the class. As a pre-reading activity, the teacher creates a Wordle of the article’s text. Prior to reading the article online, the students will (1) individually skim the Wordle, then (2) with a partner guess what the article may be about.

//Hint:// after you create your Wordle, capture the screen and crop your image down to the Wordle, save as a JPG and you are ready to embed!

http://www.wordle.net/gallery?username=//your-unique-user-name// and you will find your recent wordles. You will also see embed code for easy embedding! Caution - it is not clear how long wordles actually stay in the gallery.
 * Wordle Gallery Trick**. Save your wordle to the gallery - be sure to use a unique user name, and make note of the name you use. In the future, return to the gallery - enter this url



This middle school math classroom is using wordles and more!

**Word cloud generating tools**
tagul - has shapes, requires an account tagxedo - has shapes, can pull information from a variety of fields, no account required worditout wordle - no shapes, no account required wordsift

**Helpful utility**
Use Jingto capture your wordle, or, **save your wordle** by using the printscreen button to copy the image to your clipboard and then edit the image in paint or other photo editing program - save as a jpg. **Alternate** - paste directly into Word or PPT and edit from there using the crop tool (because it is an image - simply double click on the image to trigger the picture editing toolbar). Creating a screenshot and saving a Wordle as a graphic tutorial with screenshots (PDF).

Using Windows 7+? Do you know there is a snipping tool available to use? Find it at Start, Programs, Accessories. Use the snipping tool to "grab" your wordle and save it.

Snag It is a commercial product with great educational licensing options.

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**Articles and resources about incorporating word clouds**
50 Interesting Ways to Use Wordle in the Classroom Guess the wordle is an interesting project aimed at elementary students Here is a nice articlewith many ideas on incorporating wordle Word Clouds: 125 Ways… And Counting… To Use Wordle In The Classroom