Build Literacy Skills with Wordle

I’ve always been interested in quantitative displays of information. I’ve been having lots of fun with Wordle – a free website that creates “word clouds” (or “tag clouds”) for text analysis. Simply copy/paste text and in seconds Wordle gives you a visual representation of word frequency. The example below was created by analyzing all the words used in my blog in 2008. Click the screen shots below to enlarge.
Picture 1

While you can directly type into the Wordle text box, I would recommend you copy and past text into it. That allows you to get text directly from online sources or your own text document. Student can either work on their individual Wordles or collaborate together on one. In the later case, it’s probably most efficient to gather all their writing into one text document before copy/pasting it into a Wordle. Use tilde sign to create phrases. Example: learning~strategies. Another tip: After you create a Wordle, right click a term to remove it from the Wordle results. 

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The site allows you to modify the color scheme, font, alignment and even set the maximum number of words to include in the analysis (example top 100 words, top 50 words, etc) For inspiration on layout see these Wordle samples at Flickr

Wordle output – If you PDF generating software, you can “print” a Wordle to a PDF file. Or you can do a screen capture of the Wordle. Do live Wordles on your smartboard. For a how-to on screenshots click here.

So how could your students use Wordle?
Defining  skills – Before the dictionary comes out, give your students a new vocabulary word and ask them to brainstorm all the word they associate with it. Gather up all the brainstormed words for a Wordle. After the term has been formally defined, repeat the process and compare to the “pre-dictionary” Wordle.

Summarizing skills – As a pre-reading exercise – copy/paste text of reading into  a Wordle and ask students to predict what the main ideas of the reading will be. Another pre-reading option – give them a Wordle of a non-fiction reading and ask them to use the Wordle to generate a title or headline before they see the real article. Post reading – ask them to reflect on the reading based on a prompt (examples – main idea, what you’ve learned, funniest element, etc). Then collect all their reflections into a Wordle.

Comparison skills – Give them two different accounts / essays on the same theme / event – let them compare the Wordles generated by each. Or you could generate Wordles for two different reading – then let student see if they can match the Wordle to it’s corresponding reading.

I’ve been collaborating with fellow educators on a Google Doc guide to using Wordle in the classroom

Educate for 21st-Century Skills: Fad or Necessity?

educational fad
educational fad

Another shot at progressive education. The Latest Doomed Pedagogical Fad: 21st-Century Skill By Jay Mathews Washington Post January 5, 2009. He writes: 

Granted, the 21st-century skills idea has important business and political advocates… It calls for students to learn to think and work creatively and collaboratively. There is nothing wrong with that. Young Plato and his classmates did the same thing in ancient Greece. But I see little guidance for classroom teachers in 21st-century skills materials. How are millions of students still struggling to acquire 19th-century skills in reading, writing and math supposed to learn this stuff?

Actually millions of students are learning to think and work creatively, it’s just not in school. They do that stuff at home on their own time. Meanwhile much of their class time is now mandated on mind-numbing test prep on those “19th-century skills.” Teachers who want to have a more engaging classroom have to sneak it into the curriculum – project-based learning has been pushed to the back of the class. 

Columnist’s like Mr. Matthews have to realize that new technologies have already put students in charge of the information they access, store, analyze and share. Students are using new digital media to share their creativity with the world. 

What can schools do to support learning in the digital age?  Monitor the information flow and and thinking in the classroom. This changes the role of teacher from dispensing information to instructional designer. Students can’t simply give information back to their teacher. They need a chance to to create a product that asks them to communicate their thinking to a more authentic audience. Teachers will need the support and training to create supportive learning environments that considers basic questions like:

  • How is information flowing through my class?
  • What level of thinking skills are students being asked to use?
  • How do students get to share what they’ve learned? - Who is their audience? - What is their purpose? 

Image credit: flickr/boskizzi

Visual Literacy: How Do Your Students Share Their Thinking?

The perceived audience / purpose for most student work is the teacher / because it was assigned. Learning becomes more meaningful when students are given chances to share their thinking with more authenticity. It's as simple as adding an audience to an assignment. Example: "How would you explain your solution to younger students?" This also opens the door to more relevant self evaluation. "Did my presentation suit my audience and purpose?"

Periodic-table
Visual literacy is the ability to evaluate, apply, or create conceptual visual representations. Visual-Literacy.org has assembled a collection of visualizations in as a periodic table. Mouse over each element and a sample pops up. The examples range from simple to complex and they provide a vast array of approaches beyond the overused Venn diagram or T-chart. 

A pdf of the table is also available. On another page you can group the visualization methods by your criteria and  find background information for a specific visualization method via Google Images and Wikipedia

European DBQ Source Goes Digital

Europeana Interested in source material for your European history DBQ's? Paintings, music, films and books from Europe's galleries, libraries, archives and museums. 
The new European Commission's Europeana digital library project has been launched with 2 million digital documents including paintings, audio files, maps, videos and other artifacts at http://www.europeana.eu

Fostering Creativity

idea festival
idea festival

Creating is Bloom’s highest level of thinking. Creating is not limited to “the creative.” We all create when we make new combinations of existing elements. Someone put wheels on the bottom of a scaled-down surfboard and created the skateboard. And so it goes…

While teachers and students are constrained by mind-numbing test prep, the rest of society is working overtime to foster creative connections. In September the annual “IdeaFestival” was held in Louisville, KY. It brings together creative thinkers from different disciplines to connect ideas in science, the arts, design, business, film, technology and education. The festival motto – “If it can possibly go together, it comes together here.” Why not apply that perspective in our schools?

Here are some suggestions from the festival on how to come up with new ideas. Many can be easily adapted to help our students discover their creative potential in the classroom.

1. Think when you are not thinking, for example, on a run or walk.
2. Listen to classical music, go to a concert or a play or sit quietly in a park to daydream.
3. Read periodicals you would not typically read — a scientific magazine, for example, if you are more interested in business. Same with books outside your typical genre.
4. Attend a conference outside your field.
5. Surround yourself with creative thinkers.
6. Immerse yourself in a problem; ask questions, investigate possible outcomes.
7. Keep an idea journal.
8. Take a course to learn a new language or some other skill outside your expertise.
9. Be curious and experiment.
10. Articulate your idea, seek feedback, put structure on it, harvest it.