How-to video: Creating word clouds with Wordle
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Brief synopsis: Wordle, located at wordle.net, is a Web 2.0 application that allows digital classroom teachers and students to turn copied text from a blog or classroom web site or social bookmarking site, like Delicious, into a cloud-like graphic, featuring predominantly used words from the selected text or web site. Wordles can then be embedded on blogs or web sites and shared with with students in a variety of ways.
Benefits: Wordle is a powerful text graphic creation application that empowers users to express their creative juices easily without registering for the site. Wordle is user-friendly. Once digital classroom students logs into wordle.net, they simply click "Create your own," and they are ready to build a word cloud. Wordle asks for text to be pasted into a large box, or Wordle gives students the option of pasting a web site or blog address into an empty field, and the words from that page will populate the Wordle. People using the Delicious social bookmarking site can supply their Delicious username and Wordle will use the Delicious tags for the Wordle word cloud. Wordles can be embedded on other blogs or web sites.
Drawbacks: Wordle uses a Java applet, which many computers don't have. Wordle also seems to have trouble getting past firewalls, meaning the firewall will have to be reconfigured.
Conclusion: The how-to video above, produced by PalmBreezeCAFE, demonstrates how to use the graphic design Web 2.0 application Wordle.
