For our Tech Tac Toe project, we were instructed to try out three new "tech tools" we hadn't used before but were curious about. For my first tool, I wanted to learn more about making word clouds.
To make word clouds, there are multiple websites that will create these based on the words you input. I chose Tagul, and could not figure out how to get the program to generate the cloud once I had typed in the words I wanted. After struggling with this for a while, and losing a few sets of words, I tried clicking, "Visualize," and voila!, a beautiful word cloud was created. I then played around with colors, font sizes, importance of certain words, and capitalization. In the end, I made two word clouds about Orff-Schulwerk teaching, and one about the qualities I would like to see in my music students. As it turned out, the Music Student word cloud was my favorite.
I really enjoyed doing these, and I think kids would, too. Students could reflect on their favorite parts of music, and how it makes them feel, and create a word cloud at the end of the school year, for example. Or, it might be a good activity to do with a sub, since most subs do not have music training, but could certainly help kids work on these as an in-class project.
I will definitely use this Tech Tool in the future, maybe even for this year's Christmas card!
That music student is so eye-catching and adorable! I really like the idea of making a word cloud Christmas card... way to show the world all of your new tech savvy =)
ReplyDeleteYou have me wanting to play with Tagul too! Selecting a shape for the words really makes it fun!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great use of the tool! Music provokes so much feeling I like that the students could choose a song, interpret lyrics and create a word cloud to represent what they are expressing. This could also be used as an introduction to music class in August where they make one based on music they love, feelings and personal information about themselves.
ReplyDeleteBring in a Christmas card if you make one!