Academic Musings & Tech for Learning » educational technology

Why Wordle? & Wordle Basics

Lynne M Bailey — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:24:02 +0000

The Tech & Learning blog has a great post -Why Wordle-By Steven W. Anderson – with an excellent slide presentation and commentary on how one can use Wordle in the classroom. Wordle is about words, giving the user a visual representation and can be used in many ways in the classroom, and in all disciplines. The more often a word is used in the text, the larger it appears.

It’s also an easy-to-use Java applet. Go to wordle.net to try it out. Click on the CREATE link and you’ll find a page where you can type in, or paste in, any text. You can also type in the URL (web address) of another page or a del.icio.us user name to see their tags as a Wordle. In this example I used the text from the Why Wordle blog post. Two important tips were mentioned in the presentation on the blog post. First, you can delete individual words in the Wordle by right clicking on a word and click on ‘delete xxx’ from the little menu. [PC Users]. Secondly, use ~ to connect two or more words together to be used as one term. If you want to enlarge the size of a particular word, just type in several more times. The more often a word is used, the larger it is.

Saving your Wordle can be a bit tricky. You can save it to the Wordle gallery by clicking the button on the page, and link to the URL – that’s the easiest thing to do. You can also print it right from your computer. If you have a PDF creater installed on your computer you can save it as a PDF using the Print Function.

Or, you can do a screen capture to save it to your computer. The FAQ’s refer users to this site , which is pretty good, for more information about how to do that. Basically, you press the PRT SC [Print Screen] key on your computer. In my case I also have to use the FN [Function] key as that button is shared with the Insert key. The image is saved into short-term memory, and you have to paste it into another picture editing software application and save it from there. Your image is lost, replaced by a new image when you use the Print Screen key again, or turn off your computer.

NECC 2009: I Won!! RM Classpad

Lynne M Bailey — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:00:13 +0000

NECC 2009 was great! Better still, I was very lucky to win a Fabulous prize!!! After enjoying the presentation by RM Education of “Singin’ and Signin’” math formulas, I won one of their RM Classpads and Easiteach software. This object is the size of book, like a tablet, and lets you write on a whiteboard from anywhere in the room !! It’s really special and I can’t wait to use it.

Their software provides excellent tools as well. They partnered with “Singin and Signin” and we were treated to the Math lessons and sang about the formula of a cube to the tune of “If you’re happy and you know it” … Check them out at www.rmeducation.com and www.nickynote.com.

More blogs to come… but first a vacation … up the Smoky Mountains with some driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive.

Going to DC for NECC & Edubloggercon 2009

Lynne M Bailey — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:34:16 +0000

I am really excited to be attending this year’s NECC, my first, and the Edubloggercon unconference. I’ve signed up for lots of BYOL sessions and I’ll blog about them about when I can.

I am also volunteering for a few hours on Saturday. You can find me at from 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM at the Ask Me Station – Level 1 – Street Level. Hopefully I’ll have some answers!

Do say Hello if you’re there!