Wordle.net

This is going to be a very short post because we are under a deadline for our move to the new administrative building at Jackson Plaza & there is still a lot to pack!

Layne mentioned Wordle.net in an earlier post, but since I have been spending some time trouble-shooting our network issues with it, I thought I'd spotlight it. The picture above is our 6-8th grade Technology Standards and Benchmarks after it has been processed by Wordle. The more often a word is used in a text, the larger it appears. Think of how you can use this in a classroom. I know of one middle school teacher in our district who uses this for her current events in her social studies classes. Students type in the article and they analyze it for main idea, why certain words appear larger, etc.

Check out this slideshow on 43 ways to use Wordle in the classroom.

Now...not to be pessimistic, but our network is having some issues with this. It works fine for me. It works fine in the middle schools. It even works fine on ONE of the computers in an elementary lab...but not the other 26. It says something about our firewall not allowing JAR files, but if this was the case, I assume it wouldn't work for ANYONE. (Mamma always says not to assume anything though). So after trying every possible solution I can think of, I have dumped this into one of our tech's lap. But, give it a try...it is well-worth it!