http://www.wordle.net/
Students were introduced to Wordles and were given the directions below. I explained how important it is for writers to define what they are talking about before getting to the whys and hows.
Using the two readings which deal with the idea of what it means to be a civilized society, students worked in pairs. Three of the groups presented their Wordles and explained why they chose the words they used, why the colors, and why the layout and font.
I told them that Wordles are good marketing tools for advertising a product. When the presenters came up to the front of the class to present their case, we were the marketing team that would be choosing one proposal in our awareness campaign for becoming a more civilized America.
Although Clay and Carly did not present, I felt they did the best job in capturing the definition of what constitutes a civilized society.
If I were to change this activity, I would have the students include their written paragraph and include a short justification for their word choices, their layout, their fonts and colors.
I also would have had a polleverywhere to have students vote on the best of the three that were presented. All in all, it was a good lesson that was timed well.
DIRECTIONS: Work in pairs to create a Wordle about what constitutes a civilized society. In order for the phrase “civilized society” to appear as the biggest word, you will need to mention it at least 3 times in your paragraph.
As you discuss the content of your paragraph with your partner, keep in mind the content of the two readings.
Your first sentence should start with the sentence, “A civilized society is one that …….”
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends, and even embed them in a discussion forum.
I like how I learned how to use a wordle. I will definetly use this for future presentations and reports. I think it is a good visual to emphasize your writing. This weeks lesson was nice because it talked about what it is like to be civilized. I do not think American prisions are uncivilized, the criminals should not have gotten themselves in trouble if they did not want to deal with the punishment. No jail is going to be pretty.
ReplyDeleteJennifer Anderson
Good point about being responsible for your actions. One way to be responsible for wrongdoing is to go to jail.
ReplyDeleteI really love the idea of wordles. The day we made a wordle was the day I made a big wordle and put it up on the wall of my dorm. I feel like wordles are so many emotions all wrapped on one piece of paper. Sometimes you just need to release all of that and write it down.
ReplyDeleteTo say that no jail is going to be pretty, especially here in America, is quite the over statement. Clearly you have not analyzed the conditions that the superstars have in their "cupcake prisons". Life for them is far beyond what they had, yes, but likewise light years beyond what their fellow criminials, who just so happen to be "nobodys" have to deal with for the same crimes. Yes call me crazy, but when we take a deeper look at places, like Martha Stuarts cupcake jail, we realize that jails really can be nicer, especially when you are a "somebody".
ReplyDeletePersonally, if you do the crime like everyone else, you do the time like everyone else. Period.
But then again, I guess we have to admit that justice really isn't for all is it?
wordles had to be one of my favorite web 2.0 tools that we learned this year. It can be used for anything!! I will most definitely use this in future assignments for other classes. I really enjoyed the lesson as well. It is so interesting to see how countries define civilized so much differently.
ReplyDeleteIn reguards to the clip about americas hardest prisons, most of the people in there have to be responsible for their actions. People will not change their habits if they never admit to any wrong doing that got them into prison. Creating a wordle was something that i have never done beofre. I thought of it as a new creative way to get a message across. Using all of those words and seeing which words appear larger than others put emphasis on those words.
ReplyDeleteI found the learning of creating a wordle to be extremely useful. It's also a very fun way of encorporating different information into a creative display. I'm positive that I will be using wordles in the near future.
ReplyDeleteThe week was very entertaining; I was very interested in the class discussion of the prisons and what all goes on. It opened my eyes to see the action that goes on inside the prisons and the abuse that is hidden. I never knew what a wordle was, I only knew I saw them and thought they were neat! I was so excited when we go to make a wordle. I never thought of using a wordle as a POW introduction until this class. I’m defiantly excited to use wordless in the future.
ReplyDelete