Do You Wordle?

Everyone probably knew about this but me, but now I am addicted. I heard about Wordle at State Superintendent Sandy Garrett's leadership conference this week. I couldn't wait to try it and now that I have, I'm sure there are others out there who could use it, too.

But before I knew its name, I had already seen it. Wordle's have been turning up in the mass media now for awhile. I typed one in for The Care and Feeding of Teenagers and this is what it produced - our very own Wordle. Wordles are useful for illustrating powerpoints and getting across the collective feel of a concept. I thought it was interesting that the computer program focused in on the word "children" and separated it out boldly from the rest of the words, since a teenager is nothing more than a child trying to break free and children are, after all, "people," which also stands out prominently in the word cloud (the name for the randomized words). Clicking on the wordle here will take you to the website.



Wordle was invented by Jonathan Feinberg of IBM using the JAVA platform. It's great for presentations, inspirations, dedications, finding implications and synthesizations. If your child had a summer project for an AP course, this would make a fun title page. Just imagine how it could randomize authors, chemistry terms, the possibilities are endless.

Visit www.wordle.net and enjoy!
Melony