Imagine taking all the text from the programme of study for key stage 3 citizenship. Your task is to make an eye-catching display, with the words of varying sizes – bigger for those that occur frequently, smaller for those that appear less often.
Here's what it might look like:
©Info
Did creating that image take long? A few seconds, actually, using free services on the internet.
It is called a word cloud. This one is only so-so interesting and rather specialist. But the same technology can be used by students for more interesting text. Anyone can quickly create a visual representation of the frequency of words in any electronic document, or even a whole blog. The result is a cloud that provides new perspectives and opens up a range of talking points.
For instance, students could create and then discuss a word cloud based on
- a speech or statement issued by a politician, celebrity or organisation
- a newspaper article – comparing different articles on the same subject from different newspapers
- a blog that students read regularly
- a discussion from a social media website
- pages from the school or college website
Invite students to guess beforehand which words they think will be most frequent. Discuss afterwards, identifying surprises.
An alternative approach, either as an introduction or a follow-up, might be for teachers to create one or two word clouds, show them to students without identifying them, and invite students to work out what they might be based on.
There are some problems. The one above was created with Wordle, one of the frequently-used ones. But the owners advise caution for schools use. The site has a gallery of clouds, and there is no guarantee that students might not see an obscene one.
You cannot save a Wordle cloud to your computer. You can print it, make a pdf of it or take a screen grab.
Also note that the content can be manipulated. Words can be deleted or added before the text is posted. Discuss honesty in word-cloud creation.
To get started, go to
wordle.net (see the warning above)
or
tagcrowd.com (less colourful and striking than Wordle)
More word cloud ideas
- use them to sum up a unit of work and give them to students to help with revision
- use them as a front cover for a piece of work or as part of a display
- put key words for an essay in a word cloud and ask students to build the essay from the cloud
Credits
This resource was written by PJ White and produced in August 2009.
Send your word clouds and ideas for how to use them to reducation@redcross.org.uk
This resource and other free educational materials are available at www.redcross.org.uk/education