Tag: word clouds

Apps, Education, Games, K-12, Teaching Tools, Websites

Wordle Jigsaw Puzzles

Terri Eichholz
from: Daily Learning to the Core
from: Daily Learning to the Core

When I saw this idea on “Learning to the Core“, I thought it would make a great activity for the end of the school year.  Basically, your students create a Wordle, and then it is made into an online jigsaw puzzle for them to solve.  Depending on the ability of your students, the Wordles could: describe their school year, summarize a particular unit, give clues about a student in the class, use Word Wall words, be a famous quote, etc…

Once the Wordles are created, a screenshot can be taken and saved or e-mailed to the teacher, who can load them into a class account on Jigsaw Planet for all students to solve.

My wheels are already turning on how I might use this during the summer to keep my gifted students thinking.

Some other sites or apps you could use to create the images for the jigsaws might be:  Tagxedo, WordFoto(iOS), You Are Your Words, Tagul, ABCya Word Clouds.

Education, K-12, Student Products, Teaching Tools

108 Ways to Use Word Clouds in the Classroom

Terri Eichholz
photo credit: http://21centuryedtech.wordpress.com

“108 Ways to Use Word Clouds in the Classroom” is a fabulous post from 21st Century Educational Technology and Learning.  Word cloud generators, such as Wordle or Tagxedo, have become quite popular amongst teachers.  However, they are often used for the same few activities.  This post, from Michael Gorman, gives so many more options, and breaks them down by subject.  For example, under Social Studies, he gives the suggestion, “Show different climates of different cities showing the scale of city size using average temperature, or rainfall, or snowfall, or your idea.”  What a great way to differentiate for those higher level students in your class!  Be sure to visit Michael Gorman’s post for even more phenomenal ideas.

Art, Independent Study, K-12, Language Arts, Math, Research, Student Products, Teaching Tools, Vocabulary, Websites

Guess the Wordle

Terri Eichholz

What a Great Idea!Whether you use the Wordle riddles that “Jen” has created, or set off to make some of your own, this is a great concept that integrates technology with practically any topic you are learning.  You could use your Wordles to introduce a topic or to review something that has already been taught.  You could have students create their own Wordles that others need to guess.  One of the cool, and quite simple, features on this site is the way that she embedded the Wordles in her blog so that when you roll over them the answer appears.  This can be done when you add the alternate text to a picture you are inserting in your blog or website.  Of course, Wordle is not the only site that creates word clouds.  Tagxedo is another fun way to make these, and allows you to format them to different shapes.