Here's my blog as a word cloud (minus "Whitman" and "Egyptian" and the most common English words):
Could we use a word cloud like this in a productive way in the classroom? I enjoyed making these two word clouds, but I think this is a tool which is easy to accidentally turn into a hands-on minds-off activity. How do we use the word cloud thoughtfully?
From the post I read (see above), I especially liked one teacher's idea of using a word cloud to start an analysis of her school's mission statement and website. For the literature classroom, one place to start could be to take one surprisingly frequent word (perhaps "night" in "Song of Myself"), and explore what re-considerations it might encourage you to make about the poem. On the flipside, you could also defend a frequent word, explaining why it is essential to your understanding of the poem. What else might be productive?
Posts
I like it! I appreciate your comment about the tag cloud as "a tool which is easy to accidentally turn into a hands-on minds-off activity." This is probably true for a lot of the apps we find on the Internet. I think the word cloud works well for ushering in new ideas about the poem by way of allowing us to see the frequencies of specific words, and oftentimes we are in for a nice surprise (for instance, you mention the frequency of "night" in "Song of Myself" -- I hadn't thought about this word until now). As a result, the possibilities for meaning are opened up and expanded ("prodigal"! "always the procreant urge"!).
ReplyDeleteThe cloud also allows us to think about how important words are used more sparingly than others, but still hold the same level--or more--of significance (for example, "child" and "leaves" in your cloud above are in smaller font than other words, and are not even in bold).
The structure/layout of the cloud allows me to connect words in a different way than I would have if I were just reading the whole poem intact on the page. For instance, using the cloud you've posted above, "pass," woods," "time," and "know" are arranged close to each other, making us question what the connections between these words are, and how they function in Whitman's poem.
Urge and urge and urge! ;)
yes . . .tagging and aggregating really defamiliarizes prose and text . . a possibly important intermediary stage on the way to analysis and critique!
ReplyDeleteWhat's nice is that, unlike TokenX, you have some degree of control over its aesthetic appearance. For instance, it's fun to make the Leaves of Grass wordle appropriately with the font "Sexsmith" (because that's what Whitman is...), the layout "Any Which Way," and the colour scheme "Chilled Summer"...
ReplyDelete