A picture is worth a thousand wordsâ€¦ A thousand words can tell a storyâ€¦
Using words as a visual give a different impression than text alone. Visuals can allow us to â€œseeâ€ a concept or, a relationship that text alone might not make apparent. It can tell a visual story of words, keywords, thoughts, text, and data or create a summary.
A relatively new tool, called Wordle, is allowing anyone, without registering to create so called Word Clouds by entering keywords. Create your own Word Cloud with or for your students at http://www.wordle.net
Click on “Create” to start you own Word Cloud.
Allow keywords to tell a story:
- Create a visual of a concept
- Make a summary
- Collaboratively work on a word cloud as a group
- Write a poem
- Spelling words
- Showcase characteristics of a protagonist in a book
- Lyrics of a song
You can directly type in keywords into the text box in Wordle or create a file in a Word, WordPad or Notepad. You then can copy and paste your keyword list into the text box when you have it complete and refer back to it, when you want to edit the list.
In order to treat two words as one keyword in your word cloud, use the tilde character ~ between the words that go together. The tilde will be converted to a space when drawing the words.
This following Word Cloud was created collaboratively by educators around the world, who contributed keywords that came to their mind when thinking about Digital Storytelling. Words that appear larger were used by more contributors.
Once you have created a Word Cloud, you have different choices of how to save your creation.
- Print â€“ print to paper or print to .PDF file
- Take a screenshot- Open in Window, then use Print Screen button on your keyboard or screencasting software, such as Jing, Camtasia, Snag it
- Save to gallery â€“ give your creation a title and description
Once you cloud is saved to the gallery, two new choices will be available:
- Save to Del.icio.us account â€“ tag with wordle and other descriptive words.
- Copy code to create a link on your blog or website.
- The Power of Tags, The Power of Words
A Wordle Tutorial by Bob Sprankle
- Using Word clouds in a Lesson
by Box of Tricks
Please leave a link to the post if you have blogged about using Wordle to tell a story in a lesson!