Tech Tool For the Classroom

http://www.wordle.net/create

Tuesday we learned a bit about a few different tools that can be utilized in the classroom. Of the tools we learned to use, I particularly liked Wordle. Wordle is a site that enables you to plug in certain terms and generate a very unique word collage. A nice feature about this is that you can customize the colors, fonts and design for your word collage. Also you have the ability to make certain words bigger by repeating them more often in the list.

As an educator, especially for Foreign Language, I can see a Wordle being very useful. As a German teacher I could create Wordles using like terms, or concepts in German (and even in their English counterparts) as an alternative to a word wall. I think that because Wordles are very visual depictions, it would work well for getting students to remember vocabulary.

One downside to Wordles are that after creating them you cannot save them. Therefore, if I wanted to use a certain Wordle again, I would have to start over each time. Now I could speed this up by copying and pasting the words I used in a particular Wordle, into a Word document, but still I would need to customize it once again and it would never be quite the same.

Overall, I think Wordle is very useful as a tool for the classroom but perhaps needs a better sharing capability online. I really appreciated the presentations, and this one in particular stood out for me.