Wordle is a tool that can help you visually demonstrate to your students what a passage of text is about, what the author was emphasizing in their writing. The above word cloud was created based on the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln. The bigger the word, the more it’s prominance in the text you’ve asked to be analyzed. Of course, the assumption is that the more often a word is used, the more important it is to the meaning of the text. Do you think that’s a good representation of the Gettysburg Address?
A practical application for this tool in online teaching might be including these word clouds on the introduction or splash pages for your modules. If you were teaching an English course that was discussing Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” then you might include the following graphic that’s based on part 1 of the poem.
How else can we use these word clouds in online education?
Update: Here are 10 uses for Wordle for learning.