Aug 23 2009
Who cares what a Wordle looks like? Pupils care.
You don’t have to look too far into the internet undergrowth to find a Wordle these days. These word cloud images can be a powerful, yet flexible, tool – as shown in Tom Barrett’s 38 ways to use Wordle in the Classroom. I’ve used this tool before to analyse my own writing for a book chapter. I found that it helped me to check I had the correct emphasis and was handy for pointing out my repeated use of some words in the piece.
Just before the summer holidays, I thought I might create a series of classroom posters to help pupils identify key vocabulary for each unit of the Standard Grade Physics course, starting with the Using Electricity & Electronics topics for my new S3 & S4 sets respectively.
To generate the wordles, I copied the SQA arrangements for each unit and pasted them into the text box on the wordle site. I showed the inital results to a test group from the new S3 class and they were not that impressed.
They identified several problems with the output;
- too many words on display (Wordle.net’s default setting is 150 words)
- the random vertical/horizontal word orientation was difficult to read
- words that protruded significantly from the main cloud were distracting
- unappealing colours – particularly so whenever a white background was in use
We started work on these issues by reducing the number of words on display. The panel felt that 50 words was a good compromise and setting the output preferences to place all words horizontally was straightforward. Similarly, the positioning of words to avoid any jutting meant remaking the Wordle until it was more pleasing to the eye. Colour selection, however, was more subjective and it was difficult to achieve a consensus. Eventually, it was agreed that we would create our own colour palette as agreement could not be reached with the selection provided.
Looking back, I have to agree that the white background is not particularly stimulating and a more inviting word cloud was obtained using a custom palette. Setting up a custom palette gave a much more visually interesting word cloud, here is the final layout for the Using Electricity vocabulary.
I have to admit the preferring the colour scheme for the Electronics design – it may be the way that the scheme evokes memories of chocolate lime sweets.
I took each of the brightened up designs and uploaded them to a site called BlockPosters. This site can produce large poster-sized pdf files of any image you upload. I choose to blow up each image to a 5×2 array – spreading the picture out over 10 sheets of A4 paper. The printed A4 sheets can then be taped together to create the poster.
So I have 2 posters on my classroom wall now.
They are easier to read than the initial 150 words designs and have colour schemes that appeal to the people intended to use them. Most importantly, they are being used! When questioning the classes, I see eyes moving towards the posters during “thinking time”. Not because the answer is on the wall but because pupils know that the vocabulary to scaffold their response will be.
What a great idea – thanks for sharing. Teaching students who speak a language other than English at home, I love the vocabulary up on the wall ready to be looked and used.
Spelling, word games, concepts, questions also “jump out” as other uses for your wordles.
Thanks for sharing this post via twitter.
I looked at the ‘38 ways to use wordle’ earlier tonight and was inspired, but I love the idea of making a poster that the children have contributed ideas to.
Your post has made me think that something as simple as classroom rules in ‘wordle’ form could be displayed in a poster on the classroom wall. I have a vision of the children glancing at it periodically to remind that they have ‘ownership’ of the rules …….