Pockets of Change

I’m sure others have done this too, but I could not resist:

Can you think of the many ways to use the Wordle tool for speeches in your classroom?

Image at http://www.wordle.net.

Edit: Just to be balanced, here is the same text done with a Tag Crowd.

Thanks again to Clay for this cool tool. Here is what Act 2 of Shakespeare’s Macbeth looks like, using TagCrowd:

Thoughts and questions:

• Perhaps a tool like this could be used to help students organize ideas, by finding out what is most or least important?
• Can a text-based cloud like this have any use in a Mathematics classroom? (Mr. H, c’mon I know you’ve got something to add.)
• How could students use this tool for their own blogging? (This is actually Clay’s question, but it certainly deserves some thought so I post it here, too.)

Note: I did create a Stoplist (titled Shakespeare Playscript) to create the above TagCrowd, which eliminated all the characters’ abbreviated names, as well as all the entrances and exits in stage directions.

If you teach literature or language at any grade level, you probably already know about the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), an American-based organization under the International Reading Association umbrella.   Perhaps you already know about the ReadWriteThink partnership between these two organizations.  Or perhaps you don’t, in which case you might want to read further.

ReadWriteThink aims to “provide educators and students with access to the highest quality practices and resources in reading and language arts instruction through free, Internet-based content.”  They have several resources for teachers which are outstanding, but the one I feel most relevant to our use of technology in the classroom are the Student Materials.

• Need your students to map out or plan their story before they start writing?  Try the interactive plot diagram as a graphic organizer.

• Analyzing characters?  Perhaps they might like to make Character Trading cards — particularly fun for Elementary or Middle School students. 
• For High School students, the Webbing Tool might be a useful way to hyper-link ideas and make connections for any kind of project. 

There are oodles of others.  Lucky for you, the good people at ReadWriteThink have made many of them adjustable for different grade levels.  Clicking on any of the links above or in the general Student Materials page will bring you first to a place that lists all the lessons available to use with the tool, and of course the tool itself.   I personally prefer to browse through the list of tools to find an appropriate tool for what I’m using in my classroom, but you might prefer ReadWriteThink’s lesson structure.