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Sunday, October 7, 2012

Wordle


Wordle

Wordle is a program that is used to create patterns and shapes with a list of text of the user’s choice. Once the list of words has been entered, the user is able to pick the font, the layout and the color that will be applied to the list of words. Once the Wordle is created, there are four different options that can be chosen. The first option is “open in window”; this allows the wordle to be viewed in a separate window. From here, you can continue to change the layout, font and color of the wordle. The second option is “print”. The third is “randomize, this will randomize the layout, the font and the color of your wordle as many times as you want. The last option is “save to the public gallery”. This option allows the Wordle to be saved to the website making it viewable by the public. Saving in to the public gallery will also give you a code that can be pasted into a blog or home page to link to the Wordle.
            When I was creating my Wordle, I found the program to be overall easy to use. To create a simple “word cloud” a list of words could be efficiently entered right from the home page. The options to change the layout, color and font of the wordle was then brought up that was also easy to navigate through. One aspect of wordle that I found frustrating is that if you wanted two words to appear on the same line a ~ had to be entered between each word. This took some reading of the FAQ’s to figure out which was time consuming. Also, some of the FAQ’s were key information for creating a wordle that should have been found in some sort of directions or guidelines on the home page.
            Overall, I believe Wordle is a fun program for teachers to display a list words to their students. The appropriate age students to use this program would be middle school because some aspects of it are difficult to use. Although middle school students would be able to navigate through this program, they may be uninterested by it or even find it boring.


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