VISUAL+REPRESENTATIONS+WITH+TEXT

Word Clouds

 * [|Wordle] creates word clouds.**

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Here is a ** [|Wordle] ** created from the text of a letter written by Ralph Waldo Emerson to President Martin VanBuren, addressing the injustices being experienced by the Cherokee nation during the time period around the Trail of Tears. Visit the Cherokee Nation Site for a wealth of primary sources.
 * Idea** - create Wordles of several of the documents and compare the key words and concepts for prereading, postreading, writing prompts, etc


 * Idea** for world language educators is to take a reading in the target language, paste the text into Wordle, thus creating a word cloud of the high frequency words for the text selection. Here is a Wordle based on [|an article from El País] Imagine the current unit of study is healthy living. In //El País// newspaper (Spain) an article about a new kind of electric bike was published. The teacher would like to use the article with the class. As a pre-reading activity, the teacher creates a Wordle of the article’s text. Prior to reading the article online, the students will (1) individually skim the Wordle, then (2) with a partner guess what the article may be about.

//Hint:// after you create your Wordle, capture the screen and crop your image down to the Wordle, save as a JPG and you are ready to embed!



**Word cloud generating tools**
tagul - has shapes, requires an account tagxedo - has shapes, no account required wordle - no shapes, no account required

Use Jing to capture your wordle, or, **save your wordle** by using the printscreen button to copy the image to your clipboard and then edit the image in paint or other photo editing program - save as a jpg. **Alternate** - paste directly into Word or PPT and edit from there using the crop tool (because it is an image - simply double click on the image to trigger the picture editing toolbar). Creating a screenshot and saving a Wordle as a graphic tutorial with screenshots (PDF).
 * Helpful utility**

Using Windows 7? Do you know there is a snipping tool available to use? Find it at Start, Programs, Accessories. Use the snipping tool to "grab" your wordle and save it.

Snag It is a commercial product with great educational licensing options.

**Articles and resources about incorporating word clouds**
50 Interesting Ways to Use Wordle in the Classroom Guess the wordle is an interesting project aimed at elementary students Here is [|a nice article] with many ideas on incorporating wordle