Teaching Tools and Tips: Wordle By Morgan Keasler, Assistant Professor in Business Introduction If you are looking for an easy way to display simple information in a pleasing format, Wordle.net can help. Tool Identification Wordle is a free online tool that turns the text you enter into ‘beautiful word clouds.’ Simply click the ‘create’ button on the website and start typing, or copy and paste your text. Classroom uses for Wordle Wordle is ideally suited to displaying value relationships between words. The more frequently a particular word is entered, the larger that word will appear in the word cloud. This is a nice way to display simple survey results, or the findings from any type of assignment where people may have different answers. Example: If you asked: What word comes to mind when you think of the holiday season? Once you have created your word cloud, use the ‘Open in Window’ button to customize fonts, layout and colors. Here is a customized version of the same example: Alternatively, the ‘Randomize’ button is a quick method of displaying different style options without the work of manual customization. You can also use Wordle to display a simple list of words that are not ‘weighted’, such as a vocabulary list of important terms. Tip: If you have two words that go together, such as North Pole, put a period between the words instead of a space. Once you are happy with the design of your Wordle, you can ‘Print’ or ‘Save to the Public Gallery.’ You can save anonymously or provide a username, and then you will receive a link that allows you to delete your Wordle later. Saving will also provide HTML code that you can use to display Wordle in Blackboard. If you don’t want to save, you could take a screen shot and turn your Wordle into an image to post in your course. Conclusion Wordle offers another way to display information. It is fast, free and flexible – and likely more interesting to look at than a bar graph.