Technology Tips: Wordle

Make sure you do the GoogleDocs Tech Tip first, before you do any other tips this semester.

For this Tech Tip, you will create a Wordle word cloud. You can see an example of a Wordle I created down at the bottom of this page. Here is how to create your own Wordle:

STEP ONE: Go to Wordle.  Go to the Wordle website and click on Create Your Own. 

STEP TWO: Get text for your Wordle.  You can create a Wordle from some text you paste in or you can just type in some words, repeating a word if you want that word to be featured more prominently. I decided to paste in the text of the Declaration of Independence. I also did a Wordle for the lyrics of the song "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen; you can see the results for "Suzanne" below.

There are lots of uses for Wordle: you can get the song lyrics for a favorite song, for example, or use Wordle to analyze a political speech or a newspaper article. Anywhere you can find online digitized texts, you can use Wordle - and not just in English; please feel free to do a Wordle in the language of your choice!

STEP THREE: Adjust image (optional).  If you want to change the colors and/or layout style of the resulting Wordle, click on the menus along the top of the box. For the Declaration of Independence, I chose to make my colors red, white and blue, made the words all-caps and in an older style of font.

STEP FOUR: Save your Wordle. When you are done, save your Wordle to the Public Gallery (the Save to Public Gallery button is down in the lower right-hand corner of the screen), giving your Wordle a title. You can leave the author as anonymous, or include your name if you want. This will generate a specific address for your Wordle which now appears in the address bar of the browser. Here is the address of my Declaration of Independence Wordle:

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2989764/Declaration_of_Independence

STEP FIVE:  Email. Send me an email with the address of your Wordle. Please give this subject line to your email: Tech Tip Wordle.

When you have sent in the email, you can enter this tip on your GoogleDocs Checklist and then do the Gradebook Declaration for Extra Credit. Here is the text of the Gradebook Declaration you will complete: