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Two years ago I was excited enough about Web 2.0 tools to actually start this blog. I started with Wordle, a simple word cloud generator. After all this time, I must admit I am still passionate about using Wordle. I find myself using it regularly in my teaching, even though several new word tag generators have evolved, including Taxedo, Tag Cloud, and the ever-popular WordPress rotating tag cloud.

Still, I love Wordle for it's simplicity. Just go to the Wordle website, type some text into a box, click a button and your text becomes a Word Cloud. Anyone can do it, but the real trick is in how it's used. After all, words that appear more frequently within the text appear larger in size within the word cloud.

Here are my top 3 favorite ways to use Wordle:

1. Copy and paste the text from a few good articles about a specific topic into Wordle to get the main ideas and vocabulary. Use it as a starting point for a lesson to help students construct knowledge.
2. Copy and paste student generated text into Wordle for self-analysis of writing. Words and phrases that are overused will jump out.
3. Wordle a current event topic, then use it to generate a classroom discussion.

My goal this week is to see if we can build on the Wordle ideas we started a long time ago. Please view the list of ideas and contribute ideas of your own.

• View Wordle Ideas
• Contribute Wordle Ideas
• Try Wordle 

This Blog, Wordled

I spent the first part of my summer working with teachers to help them learn to use technology as a tool for differentiating reading instruction to help all learners succeed. During that time we experimented with many different tools for teaching vocabulary. Here is a glance at the list of tools the course participants found to be user-friendly and useful for students and teachers.

Lexipedia A very nice multi-lingual visual dictionary that creates a word web and defines words based on parts of speech. Use the toolbar bookmarklet for convenience.
Lingro An amazing tool that turns all the words in any website or digital text into a clickable dictionary and translates text into 12 different languages.
Shahi A visual dictionary that combines Wiktionary content with Flickr images, and more.
Snappy Words An online interactive English dictionary and thesaurus that helps you find the meanings of words and draw connections to associated words.
Visuwords Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts.
The Visual Dictionary This tool uses photographs of words in the real world to visually explore them.
Vocabulary.co A very popular site for vocabulary games.
VocabGrabber Copy and paste text into the box and this tool generates a word cloud to identify the key vocabulary. Sort words by content area.
Wordsift Place text into a box and then press sift to create a word cloud in which most frequently used words appear larger in size.
Wordia A tool that uses video to make personal connections for users. The school account keeps it safe for students and allows students to create their own video definitions and schools to build their own  dictionaries.
Wordle Use this word cloud generator to identify key vocabulary in digital text. Try copying and pasting more than one related article into Wordle to get the big picture.
WordStash Teachers can sign up for a free account and create word lists to support written text. With a click of a button, students can access dictionary information and create flash cards for review.

Tag Galaxy
This tool creates a 3D orbiting galaxy of words and their associations  Click on any word to move it to the center of the galaxy, then click again and watch the globe populate with images from Flicker. This is a must see.

If you appreciate a good word cloud you might be eager to learn about a tool that creates a word cluster out of the information people post on Twitter, commonly referred to as tweets.


This word cluster identifies the most frequently used words tweeted and also groups them to show relationships. Although the sample of my tweets below is only an image, you go to the actual website then  click on any word to highlight it in the tweets.