I am currently taking a class on educational media. For our last assignment, we were asked to create a Word Cloud from a Website called Wordle. Since I am an art teacher and studying art education, I decided to create a word cloud consisting of art terms. I entitled my word cloud An Artist's Words.
As I went through the assignment, I began to think of a lesson I had previously done in my classroom that was similar. The lesson was called Shape Poems. This is where I would have my students decide on an object that would like to create (ex. a bird, a football, etc.) and then use words that describe the object to create the shape of the object. Many of the students enjoyed the project, but what they got most of out of it was discovering how to use multiple words to describe something. This challenged their minds to go through the lists of vocabulary they knew. Some students had trouble finding words, so their classmates would help them. This opened the door to a collaborative effort to learn new words.
Can you see how word clouds could be used in the classroom to challenge students in the same way as shape poems? My goal as an art educator is to show the link between what we learn in the art classroom to what the students are studying in other subjects. This lesson in particular is an excellent way to show the connection between language arts and art education. But could it be used to show the connection between other academic subjects?
http://thecleversheep.blogspot.com/2008/10/top-20-uses-for-wordle.html
ReplyDeleteThat is Rodd Lucier's blog. He is on Delicious as well as "thecleversheep". He has some idea's on how to use wordle in the classroom and seems like the perfect person for us all to network with for this class.
Do you think that now you'll try to use Wordle in your classroom? The example you give here seems like a great way to integrate Wordle into preexisting lessons.
ReplyDeleteSure, I think wordle can be used to help students receive an interdisciplinary education. I truly believe that when students are involved in the process of creating visual things, whether on the computer, or using their hands, this helps to provoke the memory of that experience later in their life. Thus, learning. Even just creating something using numbers in wordle could help provoke thoughts of math and how numbers go together visually. I actually think I would only use wordle for across discipline lessons in the art room. Just creating a wordle alone is easy for the student. If they can create a wordle with objectives from another subject then the learning experience is enhanced.
ReplyDeleteThis seems like a great way to use wordle in the classroom. I think wordle could be effectively used in any subject.
ReplyDeleteThe word cloud has a showing a hierarchy of concepts visually. I think this could translate to any subject. It was interesting for me to note the concepts that predominated my clouds, as shown by the larger words.
ReplyDeleteYou could take a paragraph from a historic text, or a scientific one, and run it through the wordle, then incorporate it into an art piece.
While I know Wikipedia isn't always the most reliable source, If you check out their page on word clouds, It may be helpful towards your midterm project. From what I've read, I could see this Wikipedia entry being very helpful. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud
ReplyDeleteMaybe the teacher could make posters with facts about a certain artist or something. For example, if the students were learning about Michaelangelo, the key words might be "Cistine Chapel", "David", "painter", "sculptor", etc. Also it could be helpful to classify artists or artworks into their respective time periods or art movements like the Renaissance, Modernism, or Post-Modernism.
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