The Polliwog Journal » wordle

New year, new tools, new ideas

Dawn — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 16:27:30 +0000

One of our inservice days this year was dedicated to technology. In one session we learned about netTrekker, a subscription search tool for schools. It seems to be worth the money we paid to subscribe. I want our students to know how to use it, so I came up with a lesson to teach them about netTrekker.

But, of course, it’s so much more than that. I revised an old assignment, something I had been using since 2001, called Intro to the Internet. It relied on Ted Nellen’s assignment as a starting point. The new lesson has some of the same objectives as the old, but the new one is more relevant and, I think, a better springboard to 9th grade CyberEnglish.

One thing missing from the new lesson? True collaborative writing, which we could do at Google docs IF we were permitted. Everything in its own time, though, right?

Oh, and there’s a cool wordle in this lesson, too. I love that tool.

Diction: Using Wordle

Dawn — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:10:53 +0000

AP students are often asked to analyze the diction of a passage. Diction means to some degree the author’s style, such as formal diction, but more technically diction means the author’s choice of words. I sometimes have students highlight words and phrases that have a similar tone or meaning. They may use more than one color per passage (or simply list in categories if highlighting is out of the question).

What students begin to see are patterns and repetitions, which are, of course, (theoretically) clues to the meaning of the passage. I ask students to consider dominant patterns. Ask them to discuss what they might mean.

I copied the url for Google News into Wordle because I wanted to see if any dominant patterns would emerge.

I don’t know about you, but to me, the news seems to be filled with violence. Just “wordling” the news daily would be a great springboard for discussion.

But it would also be a good tool for finding dominant word patterns in a literary passage.

Wordle and a prereading strategy

Dawn — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:28:45 +0000

On a whim, I pasted the first paragraph of a story (A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez) into Wordle.

It would be cool to hand the Wordle out (nothing more, not even the title) to the class before reading have students in groups come up with the following:

What is the story going to be about?
Who might the main characters be?
What will the setting be like?
What is the tone of the story?
What words might we need to define?
What questions do you have about anything so far?
Whatever else you can think of . . .

The groups should save their predictions and revisit them in journals during and after reading.

I think I will try this idea this fall and see what happens.

Polliwog Wordle from July 29

Dawn — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:17:46 +0000

A wordle is clever in a number of ways. The word “wordle” is just funny; it kind of tickles the tongue, makes the tongue vibrate just a bit.

Ms K has some ideas about how to use Wordle in the classroom. I may have to try some of them, IF we aren’t blocked!

What I like best is the random word associations that Wordle makes. For example, words from the Polliwog Journal are juxtaposed, adjacent, or otherwise associated in ways they were not intended to be. This word juggling creates a new order for the brain to consider. It seems there would be some discussion starters as a result.

There is something fun and new on the Web every day!