Sometimes you see a new application on the web and think "This is cool!" - and then as a teacher you wonder "How can I use this?" I recently was introduced to Wordle, a free, Internet-based application. Wordle takes words from a document or list that you input and creates a "word cloud" graphic in which the size of the word is proportional to its frequency. You may have seen these word clouds on some news sites. You can tweak the layout and color schemes and choose whether to include numbers and whether to remove common words (e.g., is, the, are, of).

Just for fun, I pasted NSTA's position paper on Scientific Inquiry into a wordle. I tweaked the color scheme and font, and here is what was produced.
Cool, isnt' it? It's interesting how some words stand out. You may have seen these word clouds on some news sites. There are some shortcomings, though. You can't save a wordle directly to your computer. You can print it, so I used the PDF feature on my print dialog box to save it as a PDF file. Or you could use a screen capture utility. You can explore various layouts, fonts, and color schemes, but you can't edit the list after the wordle has been created. So I would create my list or document in a Word file and then copy/paste. If you have a list of words and want some to stand out, you'll have to enter them multiple times in the list or go to an advanced feature http://www.wordle.net/advanced where you can enter a word and a number (e.g., science:4). You can save your wordle to a public gallery, but there is no search feature. Some of the entries in the public gallery are not very good (and there is no spell-check), and the site has no filter for language that may be inappropriate for a classroom. If you want a two-word phrase to appear, you would have to insert a tilda (e.g., simple~machine) which will not appear on the graphic.

But even with these caveats, I've seen (or can think of) ways that Wordle could be useful. Students could copy and paste a writing sample to see the frequency and variety of words they are using (and you can get a frequency chart, too). By changing the frequency of words in a list, you could create a graphic that illustrates essential, important, and nice-to-know vocabulary for a unit. At the beginning of a unit, a teacher I know asked students for words related to the topic. He asked them again at the end, and has the pre- and post- graphics to show informally how students perceptions and knowledge have changed. Students could create them to illustrate their notebooks. Or you could solicit words on a topic at a faculty meeting or in-service event and create a graphic to share and discuss.

My hopes for the next version include the ability to upload a frequency chart (with the word and a number) and the ability to save in a graphic format to use in other applications or documents.

If you'd like a copy of the NSTA Inquiry wordle as a pdf file, click here. I also made a wordle from the position statement on Elementary Science (to share at an event next week). Help yourself, and feel free to add a comment with any other suggestions for how this could be used.