Word Clouds  

I have already written a little bit about word clouds in the section, New Tools, here  I will go into greater depth about their uses. Word clouds are visualisations of text data which can be created easily with the following websites. Please feel free to click on the images provided below so that you can see the word clouds in high-resolution. The links to these websites can be found here.

How can I create a word cloud?

Creating a word cloud is really quite easy, you can either sign up or just get started right away depending on the website you are using. If you go to www.wordle.net, for instance, you can type in several words or even an entire text to create a word cloud. The website then transforms the random words into a picture, which you can save on your pc. Furthermore, you are able to edit your word clouds by changing the language, font, colour and layout - as you can see in the slide show below. 

How can I use word clouds for an EFL class?

For starters, word clouds are fantastic eyecatchers. One could use them to introduce a new topic, a new vocabulary field, a poem or even a newspaper article. Students could be asked to talk about a topic they know about, for instance, global warming, by looking at the words from the word cloud they can get help on ideas if they can't think of anything. In a way word clouds also function like mindmaps because one can gather keywords from an article or other source. Teachers can also revise topics which have already been discussed in class by showing word clouds, the possible uses of word clouds in teaching are almost endless. Not only teachers, but also students can make use of word clouds. They could use them to make study notes, which might help them revise a topic. Students might also write a text about themselves and then transform it into a word cloud. After each individual creates a word cloud for themselves, students could be asked to identify one another using the different clouds. Upon finding the corresponding word cloud, students could then exchange them and introduce themselves to one another by using the words from the cloud. These are just a few examples of how word clouds can be used in the classroom but there are loads of interesting links about this topic.


Check them out:
www.brighthub.com/education/ - the top 10 ways to use wordle at school
www.boxoftricks.net - using word clouds in a lesson
www.betterlesson.org - creating a christmas word cloud
www.khoaanh.net - using word clouds in EFL/ELT