In all of our searching for different technological tools to use in the social studies classroom, I have come across Wordle several times on Twitter and in teachers' blogs. Wordle creates an image out of the words from the text you enter into it. The size of each word is based on its word count in the text (the more a word is used, the larger it will be). You can also control the number of words that show up in the image. A lot of teachers have used this with famous speeches, like the Gettysburg Address, and some have applied it to more recent events, like Obama's September 8th speech to students. If you check out the gallery you will see that the possibilities are endless. This tool is really neat because it can give students, or anyone, a visual representation of the important points in a text, speech, song, whatever. The Wordle creation you see here comes from the philosphy of teaching statement I wrote for Dr. Washington's class. It's really cool to see my own words and ideas represented this way. In the process of making this I also learned how to take a screenshot, which I had never done before. This was so easy to do and I think it is just the coolest thing ever.
Give it a try!! www.wordle.net
