Creating a Wordle Tips and Tricks
What is a word cloud?
The concept of a Word Cloud maintains that “If a picture paints a thousand words, then what can a
thousand words paint?” Wordle is an application that creates Word Clouds (pictures made of words)
based on the frequency of the words that are entered in the Wordle Site.
Creating a Word Cloud
First find some text you wish to make a word cloud of and make sure you make a copy of it. Next go
to (http://www.wordle.net/). Believe it or not… you are half way finished. Click on “Create Your
Own”. You will see a box to paste the text you had copied earlier. Scroll below… and hit submit.
Within a few seconds you will have your own Word Cloud. Use the controls to make it look the way
you like.
SAving a Word Cloud
Wordle does not provide a way to save but there are ways around that.. Of course you can print it…
but then you may want an electronic copy. The best way is to us one of these techniques. If you have
SMART Notebook or SMART board tool on your computer you can use the camera icon to capture
the word cloud image. In Windows 7 you may wish to use the Snip It Tool which gives you a lot more
options including the ability to save as an image and crop.
1
Created by Lisa Berg for Bolivar School District
[email protected]
Changing the sizing of the words
The more often a word appears the bigger it is in the word cloud. However, if you want to manually
change the size of the words follow this method:
Use the Advanced Wordle which can be found at http://www.wordle.net/advanced. There are some
advanced Wordle users that do not even know this exists. It is well worth your time to discover! It
really is quite simple. You must type in the word, followed by a colon, followed by the number (no
spaces). You must hit return after each entry so that each word is on its own line.
Keeping compound words together
By default Wordle assumes that every space means a new word is coming its way. This is a problem
in the instance of wanting compound words and phrases to stay together. There is a fix and it is
called using the tilde character (~) between words. Just type in the tilde (found above the Tab Key on
most keyboards) in-between the words of a compound word of phrase… no spaces. Example:
North~America, one~small~step~for~man
Making numbers show up
Wordle has a setting that automatically removes the numbers. Perhaps you wish to keep your
numbers. In fact this might be helpful in math, or using a tilde when giving a word with a quantity.
This is very easy. Once you make the Wordle you will see a Menu sho up. One of the items is
“Language”. At the very top of the language menu you will see “Remove Numbers” is checked (it is
the default). Click and uncheck it and notice… your numbers will now show up!
Include all words entered in the word cloud
Wordle likes to eliminate some of those common words it refers to as a “stop word” (a frequently-
2
Created by Lisa Berg for Bolivar School District
[email protected]
used, but unimportant word, such as “the”, “and”, or “but”). But if you want to show a student how
often “and” is in their writing you will want to stop this feature. Once again go to the “Language
Menu” once the Wordle has been made. You will see a command that says, “Do not remove common
words”. Make sure it is checked and all of your words will show up.
Changing fonts, colors, and layouts
You can have so much fun changing any of these. Make sure you discover all the possibilities after
making your Wordle. You will find these opportunities in the Drop Down Menus: Fonts, Colors, and
Layouts. You can spend hours making it look just the way you wish. If you don’t like your last
change… just go to the Edit Menu and click Undo!
Classroom Uses:
1.
Students copy and paste their written text into Wordle. The larger words are the ones they use most
often.
2. Students write a “back cover” or summary of a book. Copy and paste that information into Wordle as
a way to promote the book to others.
3. Teachers put words about a story or topic into Wordle. Students use the Wordle to determine what
the topic is or what genre the story is.
4. At the beginning of the school students create a Wordle about themselves. Using the tip above
“changing size of words” students can make their name the largest and the other words describe
themselves. Students could also do this for a friend, historical character, about mom for mother’s
day, etc.
Other Cloud Resources:
1.
Stixy www.stixy.com: create a board that collaborators can add post it notes, upload pictures,
upload documents or insert links. Really cool. Here is one I created, but locked it so no one else
can work on it. http://www.stixy.com/guest/193725 A teacher might create a Stixy board that
students can go to and download a file, then come back to the board and share their response to
the reading or ask questions. Each board can be password-protected if you choose, although this
open-ended tool does leave itself open to students editing or erasing the items on the board, so
take this as an opportunity to teach ethics and online etiquette.
2. Tagxedo www.taxedo.com makes the most amazing word clouds. I have shown some of you
Wordle in the past, but this makes word clouds in shapes. I pasted the text I found about taxedo
and created a word cloud about it (see below). Students can put in famous speeches, their stories,
brainstorm ideas, nouns, adjectives, prime numbers, etc.
3
Created by Lisa Berg for Bolivar School District
[email protected]