Week+1+-+Wordle+Ideas

After you have experienced creating a WORDLE, post a comment about anything you have observed about Wordle or your ideas for how you might use it instructionally. See the examples provided below. When you are ready to post your thoughts about Wordle, remember to click on **EDIT THIS PAGE **at the top right, then click in the next available row in the table to type your name and your one sentence idea or thought about Wordle.

If all the rows have been used, click in the last row and then click on the table icon. Then, choose Row, Add Row, Add Below to add another row for your entry. BE SURE TO SAVE! Revisit this page to see what other have posted-save good ideas to use in your own classroom!

By the way, does anyone know how to spell check in wikki? || Lakewood || I have used Wordle on several occasions. I often take student forums and create wordles. I have also used them to create T-shirts for an annual HIV / AIDS Awareness Day. Check out the Forum Wordle here! || U. L. Light MS || I think wordles would be great to summarize the main ideas of a meeting. They could be used with staff and students alike. I think they could also be used in mission and vision statement generation or may even become vision statements of the future. I see the PTA being able to use these as well. || Highland MS || I see this could be used as a prereading acitivty to determine vocabulary. Before reading the selection Wordle it to see if the most frequent words can be understaood by all || ULL Middle School || I like the idea of using the wordles for vocabulary. I mentioned on the other wiki that using it for the cover sheet for a report is really a great idea. I also like the idea of putting short stories that are accessible by internet on it and posting it on a screen so the kids can use it as a prereading activity to "guess" what a story is about based on words that are emphasized. This is a similar idea to Shelley Habeggars above, but I think a little bit of a twist. || Principal Highland MS Barberton || I am so jealous!!! I was a LA teacher before becoming an administrator and I can see so many uses for Wordle. This could be used in editing because students need so much help in identifying bland and repetitive language and using greater description. I really liked the picture Ken Kozer posted above. This could be used for fundraisers or to identify clubs - think of the words NJHS or peer mediators would fnd highlighted in a written description of their purposes. So many positive messages to display on posters and t-shirts! || Careers for Teaching Maple Heights || I think I would use this as a fun way to brainstorm ideas at the beginning of a unit or to summarize what was taught that day. Using description/summation of what they just read is something I could try. || Tech Coach Bedford High School || I enjoyed using Wordle with a speech, several different documents, and vocabulary word lists from our new textbook software. This will be a quick and easy tool for use in a variety of ways in all subjects. Great for those visual learners in our classrooms! || English Teacher Bedford HS || Though I've never used Wordle with my students, I've often thought it would be cool to use one for comparing two pieces of literature or poetry to see if there are really are commonalities. It might be a cool test question too - what piece is this, based on the contents of the Wordle. It's a great tool! || Do note that there is a great video on using Advanced Wordle at [|http://cleversomeday.wordpress.com]. || Tech teacher, U. L. Light Middle School || What a great tool to use to: get to know a student (They choose things that represent them) study terms for any subject (see if they can identify all the terms and define them) define a club and what it stands for...) Can be used in every subject area. || Bedford High, Science Teacher || I see a few ways to effectively use Wordle in my chemistry classroom. First, at the end of a chapter, when preparing for a test, I think it would be very interesting to have each student put ~10 things (terms, ideas, etc) they feel are the most important to know. Students would have to submit them to me prior to the review, and I would assemble a Wordle to show the entire class what they created. I could use this a great springboard for students to see what they need to make sure they study, and bring attention to something they may have missed. Also, I have some of my classes write papers on different topics. It would be very interesting to make a Wordle based on their papers, to see the commonalities between them. || ESL Location Varies || Love it. Ideas: Wordle of all the different languages spoken in the district, or a school building. Wordle of reasons kids came to this country (or their parents did.) Wordle of unit objectives. For kids who aren't writing much yet, list of words they know/can write put into a Wordle. || Spanish Lakewood High School || I can't wait to use this tool to create engaging word art for all of the 500+ vocabulary words we learn. I hope to learn additional ways to use this tool to engage learners. || LHS || I have never used Wordle before, but I can see many uses for it in my Writing for College class, particularly Vocabulary Study and brainstorming. I also think the printed products would make great room decor! || HMS || I have seen Wordle used in a middle school computer class and the students are engaged and quite creative. Can't wait to start using it in both computer and Spanish classes! || LHS || I use Wordle to create artwork that decorates my classroom. For example: http://mathlore.net/lhs/images/Math_Wordle_3.png || GMS ||< Ideas for Intervention LA- copy/paste their HW passage assignment into Wordle to see which words "jump" off the wordle. Discussion - do they reflect the main idea? For regular LA - use a wordle of their reading to help create poetry. I am concerned that students would just create a product with little thinking involved. Wordle assignments will need to be carefully crafted to avoid this. || LHS/ Art || OMG!!! As an art teacher this would be a great student exercise incorporating vocabulary art terms with color schemes, font type, compositon and mood. There are times when students look for instant gradification and this would be a great outlet for them. || Heskett Middle School, Bedford || I have tried to have students create a picture of vocabulary in class to help them remember the meaning, but some students have a hard time coming up with a drawing. A Wordle would be a great option for those students. || EHS || Wordle can be used to make visual poetry out of text. It could be used in the English classroom to literally visualize an important speech from a play, or a descriptive passage. I'd like to play with it using Shakespeare. It could help students grasp the concept of a character's speech more readily. || LHS Math || Wordle creates some spectacular graphics, and probably has some uses in ELA and social studies classes. I have created several Wordle displays to decorate my classroom using math topics and math vocabulary from lists of words, repeating words that I want to appear bigger in the graphic. On occasion my students ask me how I created them, or how I controlled Wordle to get the desired result. I'll usually ask such students to create another one for our classroom.
 * ===**Participant Name** === || ===**Ideas about using a Web 2.0 Technology like Wordle** === ||
 * Donna Pepper || I like the way words that I have used more than once appear larger since it helps me get a visual of the "big ideas" in my writing. ||
 * Cheryl Ward || Paste in the content of a famous speech and see if students know the speech, study the words used most frequently, is that why the speech was famous? ||
 * Keith Ahearn || I created a Wordle using [[Week 1 - Wordle Ideas#|Margaret]] Chase Smith's speech called the "Declaration of Conscience." She delivered this speech on the floor on of the Senate against Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist Red Scare. The main ideas of her speech jump out at students. I think that this type of technology allows for thought prevoking discussions around the salient points of speeches before students dig into greater depth and meaning. I love Margaret Chase Smith because I grew up in Maine where she was an icon there. ||
 * Patrick Griffis || Wordle is nice in that it creates a visual on the words or main ideas of a certain subject and the students can use it to be creative and still show why and how ideas can be important and a visual can help this. ||
 * Rachel Neugebauer || I have never visited this site before, I find it very interesting. I think students would really enjoy using this for a visual representation. I can also see using this for main ideas or themes in writing. I think this would be great for students to use in poetry as well. ||
 * Nevin Jenkins || This was my first time also. At first I did not understand the significance because some of the participants in the gallery put up some weird stuff. But then after playing with it and seeing how some people up above pasted in a speech, I decided to use Malcolm X's speech from Mecca. Using Wordle had an immediate impact on my psyche because the words that he used most were larger. What I would like to do is transcribe a teacher talking to the class and then paste that text into Wordle. How large would "Sit down" or "Stop It" or "Stop Talking" be? (Smile) ||
 * Ann Pesta || I had a ball with Wordle. I played with the color options, the display of the words...horizontal or vertical or half and half. I used one of my comments from a forum to make the wordle I used. I think this would be a fun thing to use for science notes, lab conclusions, even a paragraph from a text book just to see what happens. I want to use this to make a t-shirt for our trip to Cedar Point for science day next year. ||
 * Martin Danial || So Wordle seems to be an great tool to visually appeal to students while still communicating and sending a message about the information presented. The ability to engage students in another mode (primarily visually) can play a major role in working with the diverse learning styles of students. ||
 * Kevin Holcomb || Wordle seems best fit for language arts. Being a math teacher, I suppose I could print out a list of new definitions, before starting each chapter. I.E. when starting the section on geometry, I could provide students with key terms and concepts for Ch 7 and 8, using the wordle poster. Students could then search through the poster and define all terms. ||
 * Brian Filiatreau || I think Wordle could be a great motivational tool with my special ed kids. I find working with vocabulary with the is like pulling teeth. This would be a very cool tool to use to help keep them engaged while giving the some creative freedom. Aside from this I could use this for a variety of displays or presentations on books. Good site, it was my first time. ||
 * Brian Nehlsen || Wordle could be used to have students brainstorm topics. It would be interesting to see if you combined the brainstorms of all classes to see what the more common ideas are. We could also use Wordle to see which words are most used on OAA Tests!! We could simply copy and paste these into wordle. This would help with vocab! ||
 * Brittany Beutel || Wordle is very cool. I think this is a neat tool for anyone, but subjects like english and social studies could really go to town with this. That OAA vocab idea would be excellent! ||
 * Matt Mihalyov || Wordle seems so simple to me that it surprises me how visually powerful it appears. I think students would find this appealing in the same way. It's not a tool that is going to magically teach the students the content, but it would be a very good way to encourage discussion. The visual aspect is really intriguing. ||
 * Andre Bruwer || Wordle was new to me but i had great fun using it. As a math teacher i find myself limited to what i might use it for. I am thinking about linking it to my moodle page and getting students to collectivly add words to it over a period of time while we are working on a particluar secion. Then at the end we'll see what jumps out. Bigger words will jump out as key for that section.....mmm i see a class T-shirt in the making here :-) ||
 * Vicki Tomasheski || I loved playing around with this and can definitely find use for this is in classroom situations. I loved rotating and changing the format of collected words. It really is a cool visual... graffiti! Might be a neat activity for me to introduce right now...end of year memory word collage! ||
 * Amy Miller || I was taking different speeches of various people and putting them into Wordle to see what the main messages were...what stood out...I used MLK's "I Have a Dream" and a speech by Adolf Hitler just to see what stood out. I think it would be interesting to study the speeches of a person and see if the message changed over time and then talk about WHY it changed. What was going on at that time. It would be interesting to have students take an essay or some writing piece and copy and paste into Wordle. The student could determine if that is the message they want or if they need to edit it..... ||
 * Adriana Greenlief || I had some thoughts about using Wordle for instruction. Wordle could be used to activate prior knowledge or preview a topic. I also think it would definitely be a different way to display vocabulary or for students to study vocabulary. Students could use wordle to complete reflections on learning. As a review, wordle could be used for students or by students. ||
 * Britni Theofilos || I would love to use this for difficult science terms and have students create a wordle that includes the difficult science term and as many other words that they can find that would relate the the main term. ||
 * Doug Sudomir || Wordle could be a good tool when working with students on writing skills. If a student has a habit of using the same words over and over again it could be a good way for them to easily see which words they might want to work on replacing. I think this could help to encourage them to expand their written vocabulary. ||
 * Phil Hodanbosi || Wordle could be a great tool in the math class to help students grasp vocabulary terms. I copied and pasted the Gettysburg Address into the site and found the word "dedicated" to be most prevalent. The software acts as a graphic organizer of thoughts and some students process information more easily in this manner. ||
 * Sean Wheeler || I love to use Wordle as a pre-reading activity. This year, I pasted the entire text of Romeo and Juliet into a Wordle and then had students discuss what themes might be important in the text based upon the frequent use of key words. This worked very well and was a great discussion starter. I've also taken whole class essay responses on a given topic, thrown them all into Wordle at once, and we've discussed what threads tend to run throughout all of their answers. I really like that Wordle can accomodate lots of text, as I think this can become a really cool analytical tool. ||
 * Jon Mockbee GHMS || Every day on my bulletin board, and projected on my screen I have the objectives posted that we are going to work on today. Wordle would be an interesting tool to post the objectives so that the students can see what they are expected to know by the end of a lesson.
 * Katie Gerard || Wordle is really a creative and fun way to use specific or random vocabulary. I actually cut and pasted part of the TECH. Standards. After I created the wordle, I played with it some more adding colors, changing fonts, word directions, etc. After reading Sean's response, I look forward to using it next year in my LAX class for a pre-reading activity. ||
 * Karen Wheeler Lakewood || I'm drawing a blank on how to use this in a math class. I search the web for some ideas and they were not that impressive or useful. I love this tool in other subject areas. I would really appreciate a useful math example. ||
 * Ken Kozar
 * Tricia Mencin || At the beginning of this week, I was not sure how I would use this with upper level math classes. Then I had my statistics classess watch a video on a case study about drug development and FDA approval. I had the students list all the 'vocab' from the year they recognized. It was fun playing around with these and now I can use it as an introduction to the vocabulary next year. ||
 * Justin Gates
 * Jim Hull || I am constantly amazed at what is out there to engage not only students but educators as well. I plan on presenting Wordle to our teachers and let their own creativity be their guide. Sharing examples of how other teachers have used Wordle should stimulate those creative energies. ||
 * Shelly Habegger
 * Amanda Recker Garfield Heights Middle School || Wordle could be an excellent and effective tool for science vocabulary. It would also be effective in highlighting key words in each unit in an engaging and creative way that students could remember. I will use it at the beginning of the year for students to create a wordle to tell me what words they would use to describe a successful student. ||
 * Chrystal Cotner
 * Tara Reis
 * Melissa Jacot
 * Reza Mohasses- Science Teacher at Warrensville Heights High School || I also believe that the aspect of literacy which is knowing the terms of the content and their meaning is important not only for standardized test preparation but also for being able to follow along within lesson units (chapters and so on) well and make teaching an easier task for us teachers as a result. I think wordle does make this task of getting the students at least exposed to vocabulary better. They can search the vocabs and then look it up. What we are doing here is to enable the visual learners to also get into the mix which would actually include me! Many students are visual learners at some level so this technology can make a difference! ||
 * Michael Zaletel
 * Alison Cox
 * Jim Jakubowski, Warrensville Hts HS, Science Teacher || Wordle would be a terrific tool to help students, especially those visual learners, to focus on the key terms and phrases in any chapter from a textbook. Seeing any term in a LARGE font would signal that the term was cited often in the reading, so clearly that is a term that they should learn.
 * Bill Wagner, LHS principal || I LOVE the Wordle tool. I can certainly see the applications to a book study, essay review, lecture notes, meeting minutes... I love the way it pulls out the most frequent words and how it focuses attention on the key items... It would be interesting to apply it to our student and staff handbooks and see what jumps out! ||
 * Ellen Dies
 * Heather Keister
 * Susanna Hobrath
 * Matt Heslep
 * Melanie Whiting || I think that Wordle would be a great tool to use when doing discussions in reading. Maybe set up a Wordle for each group to list character traits, main ideas, conflicts, resolutions, ect. I think a Wordle can be another way to have a discussion with words, but without speaking. Give students a topic, and they have to post a thought to Wordle so that it is done anonymously but everyone shares and idea. Then a discussion could be had by reflecting on the Wordle. ||
 * Sandy Storey || Wordle helps visualize a concept. It could be used for word or topic definition. I could see a discussion starting with a Wordle listing all of the things we think we know about the topic. Then create another Wordle at the end of the instruction using the new learning. Could have some interesting results.... ||
 * Dennis Ebner
 * Chris Riggle
 * Peter Petto
 * < Pam Thompson
 * Barb Wolansky || I would use wordle with students to encourage safety both in the community and personal safety. For the visually impaired students... a worldle can be transposed onto special paper that allows the student to feel the raised lines of the worlds and creates a special tactual affect. this would be a really nice tool to use ||
 * Arline Olear
 * Jennifer Brown
 * Amy Garvey
 * Peter Petto

In general I think that Wordle does not offer sufficient creative control to be a construction tool in my classroom. However, it can do a good job provoking discussion and thought. || Robert Wood I can't wait to get started using Wordle in my 8th grtade LA class. I was in another teacher's classroom at school and noticed she had used this program last May. It was already on my list of ideas for this year.

Lasure Johnson (Bedford High School) I first became aquainted with Wordle in a class a took a couple of years ago and have used it in a variety of ways. My favorite has been with my English IV classes in which they respond to readings on our wiki and then choose words or phrases that are often found in responses from their peers to create original wordles. It has also been useful in helping students with vocabulary terms they were not familiar with.
 * Norah Grevey I would use Wordle to get my students excited about expanding their vocabulary. They can then design the page by changing the fonts and colors. They would enjoy doing something creative while expanding their knowledge ! ||
 * Diane Girbino - This could be used in Social Studies to see if thre is bias in an article or in a textbook. ||

Laura Heckman-Spear The possibilities for a Wordle are endless. I would use it for now content vocabulary. I would also use to to make a visual presentation of a main idea and details of a reading selection. It could be used before a lesson/unit to introduce what the students will be learning.

Ramsey Inman (Bedford High School) - The Social Studies portion of the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT) has a numerous amount of vocabulary words and concepts that each student must master in order to pass. I will use Wordle to generate a list of OGT words to focus on every week. They will also be linked with the sections and chapters of the textbook that we are currently focusing on. I will post this up in the classroom. The large words on the Wordle document will be the broad concepts or vocabulary, and the smaller words will be the more specific words (if Wordle can work like that). Either way, it will be a great tool to build vocabulary. Students can also create their own Wordle document by skimming the chapter for their most important vocabulary terms in the chapter. Then they can compare their vocabulary list with the teacher's list.

Lisa Shaffer-GilI I like the idea of using it to pull themes from text. Students could use quotes from characters or key passages to find common themes. I'd like to try it as a way to review concepts, notes or literary terms and the essential questions of each quarter for English classes. It's fun to play with, and the visual is great.

Mary Jo Mallchok (Orchestra-All Elementary Schools-Lakewood) I am a first time Wordle-er and I enjoyed it very much! I pasted all the lyrics to John Lennon's' "Imagine" and had fun changing color and format. However, when I initially posted to the gallery, there was an inappropriate Wordle there. When I posted my second try, the inappropriate one was gone. So there must be some catch filter for inappropriate words but obviously it does not work 100% of the time. I could imagine using Wordle for a weekly concept map on my teacher website. I liked Andre's idea of the ever changing Wordle on his moodle site [using student input] and wondered how I might do that. **The beauty of Wordle is the possibility of engaging as many students as possible and alllowing them to create!** I wish they had a "note" Wordle where I could paste in a song and then there would be a visual of which note(s) were most or least used. Heck - Forget the notes! How about a "Notle" that allows me to paste in a sound file? Imagine...

Matt Shields, Lakewood City Schools- Wordle is something I have seen an ESL teacher use this past year. She really loved it. I will try to experiment more this year. I can see students who have a hard time organizing //vocabulary// into //main concept areas// benefit from using Wordle.

Maria Ras- Bedford City Schools I've used Wordle with my students for previewing novels or short stories. I would create a Wordle using a passage from the text that my students would be reading. Then, I ask my students to make predictions based on the Wordle. Obviously, the first time I use this with my students, I need to explain to them how to read the Wordle properly (font size). I also have used this to assist my students in choosing vocabulary words from our readings. They truly enjoy using these.

Julie Rea, Lakewood High School, Intervention Specialist I would like to try using Wordle to help students find vocabulary words they need to know for a course. They could connect to a text book website--I wonder if you can easily do one chapter at a time? Or, cut and paste from a chapter, and see what the key words are. I did this from a flipchart I had from a course I taught--it was kind of tedious, but it showed me that I needed to look for different forms of the same word--even capitalization makes a difference.

I like the idea of using it to make a concept map. And Notle is terrific! Mary Jo, you need to work on that!

Tabitha Pesch - EHS I think Wordle is interesting because of the way it makes words beautiful. I also appreciate that it makes more frequently used words appear larger to showcase importance. When I fiddled with Wordle for the first time I was surprised that the words I expected to be largest were not. It makes me wonder if a study on word usage could be done with this program. I'd be interested to see what words our students use the most in their writing... I also thought that, perhaps, you could copy and paste a bit of text from the text books and see if any words pop out that might be useful as vocab words... I was a little concerned though when I noticed that the gallery had the "F-bomb" plastered all over it. I realize that the gallery changes and that the site, being public and open, is likely to have 'bad words' on it but, imagine a parent's thoughts when their kid says: "Hey, Mom, check out this site my teacher showed us today!" and they see that. I wonder if there is a way to filter such things.

Jenn Pollack - EHS I have been thinking about what I am going to do the first few days of school for the students to introduce themselves to the class. The usual interview is getting boring. I think Wordle would be a great activity for introductions! The kids can write a paragraph or so describing themselves, then create a wordle!

Tanya Aponte-Brown, EHS I like the idea of using wordle for students to tell me what a word or phrase of importance was during reading. This can jumpstart a class discussion, and perhaps prompt a review. I also like the idea that this can be used by both teacher and students for multiple learning activities.