PE4 Wordle

The assignment of creating a Relevant and Innovative Learning Scenario (RILS) using a Web 2.0 tool of my choice is turning out to be interesting.  I don't have a workplace to incorporate this learning objective, so I created a "virtual learning environment" using a special Facebook page that I established just for this purpose.  I then invited my Facebook friends and family, and some previous co-workers to participate as my target audience. 

The tool I chose to teach about is Wordle.  I really love this tool and I believe it can be very helpful to anyone teaching any subject that wants to put words into a visual graphic to help stimulate learning.  The task of writing out the objective and instructions was not difficult, and getting the information to people was easy using Facebook and email.  I did some walk through of Wordle as I was writing the instructions to make sure I was explaining it well enough, so it will be interesting to see what feedback I get on that. 

Working in Wordle is very easy and it is just a matter of entering text into a text box and hitting the create button.  Then once the creation is on the screen changes can be made to font style, color, placement and background colors.  There is also a maximum allowed word count that can be changed from the default 150 words per design.  I've played around with the maximum word count quite a bit  so far.  More to follow in the next blog after I work on a few more tricks.

Below is my Wordle design of my daughter's eulogy to her best friend who died in an auto accident 3 August this year.  Taty spoke at her service and I wanted to do a tribute to Livi, so I imported the text from the speech she wrote and put it into Wordle to see how it would look as a picture.  It is remarkable, just like Livi was.