The last couple of weeks have been very busy, catching up on lots of work and stepping into the new school year. Now I am just trying to catch up on my reader, and a number of things keep popping out.
Wordle is one of them. This new tag cloud generator allows individuals to generate images that capture the essence of a piece of text, a website or a del.icio.us account. While it may seem rather silly, I believe that these new types of tools will become more important as a new information model defines the global community of the 21st century.
As a test, I sent my blog through the Wordle engine, and this popped out (click for a larger view). While a large smattering of terms fill the image, two primary words capture the center. The first is “learning”, reflecting my passion to shift education to reflect our young people.
The second, “teachers”, should also not be surprising. I want to point out the difference between “teachers” and “teaching”. I was happy to note that teaching didn’t even rate on the radar. This reflects a conscious effort to focus on moving the conversation from teaching to learning – to the point where I rarely discuss “teaching” strategies – or “teaching” anything else for that matter.
Now the questions becomes – could Wordle be an effective tool for learners in the education enterprise?
tags: technology, education, whipple, learning, wordle
Funny you should ask. I had an epiphany of my own when I put my professional platform through Wordle. I had intended to do action research on enactment (drama) strategies. However, the word ‘technology’ popped big in the cloud, so now I am trying to re-orient my project.
As far as Wordle itself, I have blogged about some useful & useless applications of ithere,but in general I think it tends towards a gadget-y feel. In the right hands, illuminating, otherwise just a cool trick.
It must be validating to see that those two words show up in greatest frequency for you.