Wordle

I just love word clouds. I got a bit carried away trying to find things from which to create that word cloud, playing with layout and colors and then trying to save it. The PC fought me all the way when it came to saving the Wordle output. I found the MAC much easier. I was able to write it to a file that I imported directly into iPhoto. I then cropped the picture and exported it as a jpeg. I have used a couple of these on my website. This is a fun way for students to see how written works can be interpreted without benefit of a human interpretation. Wordle just sees words and not emotion. It would be interesting to have a class read a poem, discuss its meaning and then feed it into Wordle and see if they agree with the resulting artwork. It might also be fun to have students create their own version of the word cloud from a piece of literature. What great conversation might be sparked from those presentations!