infospot

Combine a Google Docs form with Wordle to create conversations starters about a topic or unit.

Begin by signing up for a google account.  This gives you access to google docs: spreadsheet, word processing, presentation and forms. Great idea, even if you don’t actually use the tag cloud idea presented here.  Google docs allows you to share documents and collectively edit them. This is called cloud computing and there is a cool general video about it here.

Create a form in google docs.  FYI I was confused about editing the form after I created it.  When you re-open it, it shows as a spreadsheet.  There is a menu called form, which allows you to edit the actual form.  Otherwise, the spreadsheet shows the results of form input.

At the bottom of the form is the link for students to access the live form.  I copied the link and used tinyurl.com to shorten it. Here is an example form.

After people submit their information via the form, you can copy and paste the lot into the wordle.net “create” interface and generate the Wordle.

Uses for this process:

Let’s say you are beginning a unit on The Holocaust. You can ask students to generate words they associate with The Holocaust.  They can submit these via the form. The form lets you to return and submit again, allowing multiple submissions.  If you create a Wordle at the beginning of the unit and again at conclusion, you can have a discussion about how/why they are different, ie: how were your perceptions changed by the information you gained.

You could do something similar when opening a unit comparing plants and animals.