Reflecting on Word Clouds

Word Cloud Use in the Classroom: Some may find including this assignment in a post surprising. Integrating technology sounds like it should involve only robotics or creating websites. "Word clouds, big deal." In fact, the assignment was even surprising to me on two fronts: 1) it seemed very simple and 2) there are more uses in the classroom than I thought. When I began, I was thinking back to my when daughters used to make these in their earlier grades. They really enjoyed the process of making the word clouds, but they had no educational value to them. Though I used to help them, I didn't pay attention to the additional information and options on the websites.

Once I noticed the different image choices and vast color options, class assignment ideas began coming to me. I was very pleased with the word cloud I created for my own assignment, using the bright red stop sign to represent ethics in tech integration. The image really makes a statement with not even showing complete sentences or multiple images. Fortunately, the universal stop sign image is recognizable to everyone and goes well with the theme of ethical dilemmas.

The post provides suggestions for classroom use of word clouds, including a book review or a self-portrait. Selecting images that represent the message is definitely an important factor in the success of the word cloud. The drawbacks to incorporating word clouds are not providing legitimate rubrics for grading the assignment and overusing the activity. If students do not know that this is a real assignment and should be completed as such, they may just use a bunch of thoughtless words and create a random image. The message is then lost and meaningful expression useless. Finally, just as with everything, there can be too much of a good thing. Since this activity can be done quickly and is fun, it's possible to allow students to create word clouds too often. Variation should be incorporated to keep students engaged and excited.