Word+Cloud+generators

=Word Cloud Generators=

There are now a number of word cloud generating websites that teachers can use:
 * **Wordle** @http://www.wordle.net
 * **Word Sif**t http://www.wordsift.com

=**Wordle**=

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"Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes." ([])======

**How to use it - some ideas**
Talking about music, you'll get to know what kind of songs your learners like. //Wordle// offers an interesting way of presenting a number of different songs so that the focus is on the content of the lyrics.
 * 1) Presenting songs**

You can input song lyrics into //Wordle// and create word clouds (like the example below: '//Yesterday//' by the Beatles)

[[image:dogme2:songs-yesterday.jpg height="357"]]
I created W//ordles// of a number of songs, printed them out and gave them to the students without explaining what they were. The students talked about the texts and soon guessed they were songs. After guessing the song titles and artists, we went on to talk about types of music and what they liked, etc.

**2) Articles**
When a topic of interest comes up in class, you might decide to look for an article about it on the Web. After you've found an interesting article you want to use, copy and paste the first paragraph into Wordle and create a word cloud such as the one above about //Crazy English//([|//http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/28/080428fa_fact_osnos//])


 * Hand out the article and ask the learners to decide what the article is about in pairs/groups
 * Listen to their ideas and then give them the original article to read

**Find out More**

 * 25 Interesting ways to use Wordle in the classroom
 * Using Wordle in the EFL/ESL Classroom
 * Using Wordle for Vocabulary