// Langwitches Blog

There is a Wordle Meme floating around the bloggersphere, started by GeekyMomma. Here are the instructions:

1. Create a Wordle from your blog’s RSS feed.
2. Blog it and describe your reaction. Any surprises?
3. Tag others to do the same.
4. Be sure to link back here and to where you were first tagged.

I would like to take the meme several steps further.

Since the RSS feed of your blog will be only a snapshot in time of what your are posting to your blog,

5. Create different Wordle clouds of your blog’s RSS over a period of time. Do it once a month for the next year.

Save your  Wordle screenshots in a special folder on your computer or even better create a set on Flickr to store your archived clouds. See what story your  Wordle clouds tell as you compare them to each other. Start documenting your “Zeitgeist” (Spirit of the Times) as mentioned by Chris Betcher in his K-12 Online Conference presentation I like Delicious Things. An Intoduction to Tagging and Folksonomies

6. Share other uses (at least one)  you have found for Wordle (for your students or personally) to your blog post

Look at Web2.0 Wednesday Challenge’s examples

Here is Langwitches’ RSS blog feed November 26, 2008

Reaction:

What are some of the tags that stick out the most:

tags, tools, children, ICT, storytelling, classroom, Animoto, great, Art, Journey, Alphabet.

The word “tags” must be so big, because I post daily my del.cio.us links to my blog. The last few days were mostly these automated del.cio.us posts and few authored posts. So, I feel that that it is not an accurate “snapshot” of what Langwitches is mainly about. It is a snapshot if this past week only.

The following is my del.cio.us cloud taken as of November 26th, 2008. I will also start storing this snapshot with a timestamp on Flickr, in order to be able to compare in the future to others.

Here is my “other” suggestions how you could use  Wordle with your students. Our elementary school teachers may times(in different grade levels) have their students create a self portrait and ask their classmates to write an adjective or describe that person in a sentence around the illustration. How about if you start a text document and ask each student to start writing their name about ten times. Then have other students add to that document words that they think of when describing him or her. You can then paste it into Wordle and voila have a word cloud about the student. Make sure you make it clear that it is OK to write the same word more than one time.

I created the following word cloud by copy and pasting several recommendation letters that were written about me into  Wordle.

I am tagging the follwing people to join in by contributing Wordle uses in the classroom and getting into the habit of “wordleing” to documenting their “Zeitgeist”:

1. Paige McGee
2. Katie Bennett
3. Kathy Balek
4. Melanie Holtsman
5. Andrea Hernandez
6. Chrissy Hellyer
7. Kim Cofino
8. Heather Vlach
9. Nancy van Wahlde
10. Anyone else who wants to jump on board