A d c o l o g

I came across Wordle.Org a few months ago and found it very entertaining.  It let’s you input text, either directly or from a feed or API, and then makes a tag cloud out of it, the most important word is largest.

Obviously there are all kinds of fun to be had with this, but I actually found a very useful function;  copy and past the content of websites or government reports and see which word stands out.

For a presentation I did, I put the Leitch Review through.  Unsurprisingly, the word SKILLS is largest, but it’s interesting to pick out other words that feature high on the government agenda.  I’ve put our website through Wordle too and, once I’ve taken JISC RSC YH out of the equation, I’m pleased to see that ‘Learning’, ‘Support’ and ‘E-Learning’ are the big words in our cloud.

There are two ways i can see this being used:

• As a research tool by learners or staff – by putting,say, a Wikipedia entry, through Wordle, it’s easy to draw out the apparent key themes of a piece.  Obviously this isn’t a fool proof method, but it could be a good way for learners who are unable to read large pieces of text sand want a visual representation of them.

• As a display tool – in my recent presentation, I found Word Clouds a great way of explaining statistical and text based trends.  On a website, you can show the message being transmitted.  For statistics, simply put in a word for each % and see the result (ie if 25% of learners are from Leeds and 75% from Halifax, type Leeds 25 times and Halifax 75 times….obviously the more option the better, but it’s a refreshing change from the pie chart).

If you want to use this idea interactively, you can do that too.

Use Google Docs to create a Spereadsheet then click on form.  On the form, type a question (eg: What’s your favourite colour).  Share the form with learners, and the results are input automatically into your spreadsheet.

Select the column with the results in by clicking on the letter at the top, then right click over the selexcted area, selecting “Add Gadget” from the list that appears.  A variety of gadgets are displayed,  select “Wordcloud” from the list.  A Word Cloud appears in your document. As the learners fill in your form, the word cloud will populate itself.  If you click on the setting box for this gadget, you can also add it to iGoogle page, for easy reference.

This gives you a great way to collect feedback and display it in a readily accessible way.