Word Clouds

I found this activity to be very easy and fun. I was aware of Wordle before, but never had the chance to experiment with it. I chose to do a word cloud in my field first because I thought it would be more fun. I chose to do the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln. I feel that this is one of the greatest speeches of all time, so why not have a word cloud to describe it? Here is my Gettysburg Address Wordle.

 

I found this activity to be very easy because there really is not much that you have to do outside of the program. You just type in a bunch of words and they do the rest for you. It was a lot of fun going through the random images and choosing the one I liked the best.

When viewing the NETS T standards, there is some difference between what the standards were in 2000 versus what they were in 2008. In the NETS standards 2000, one can see the main focus is on technology and teachers using that technology for student learning. I think this was the beginning of having lots of technology to use in the classroom, so NETS T standards were built around teachers starting to use different things in their classroom. When comparing the 2000 standards to the NETS standards 2008 one can see there is a change. The 2008 standards are more focused on the student learning how to use digital resources in their classroom. Technology is now an assumed part of a classroom and the focus has to be on using that technology to help in the learning process. It also seems that the NETS standards are promoting more of a student led learning than a teacher led learning. I feel like they are trying to put more responsibility on the students for their learning.

This activity relates to the NETS standards of facilitating and inspiring student learning and creativity. Students can play around with this software and create word clouds that relate to classroom topics. Second, teachers are designing and developing digital age learning experiences. This tool would be great to use when learning about wars or cultures of different civilizations. Students could easily pick up on the most important information because of its size and the attention the words draw. Third, if teachers do the word clouds themselves, they are showing students that they are willing to use this type of technology as well. There are many benefits to using Wordle and I am going to start using it as a project for my next chapter.