Richard D. Solomon's Blog on Mentoring Jewish Students and Teachers

Our hope is that this blog will become a forum in which people can exchange ideas on how to recruit, develop and retain exceptional Jewish educators through mentoring and e-mentoring students, teaching candidates, and teachers in our day and supplemental schools. The present focus of this blog is to empower Jewish teachers, administrators, teacher trainers, consultants, and staff developers to integrate web technology (i.e. web tools and apps) into their teaching and teacher training.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

What is a word cloud and how can word clouds enhance instruction?

What is a word cloud?

A word word cloud or word collage is an artful display of words that are contained in a narrative. The words most often used occupy the largest amount of area or space.

For a more elaborate explanation of a word cloud click here or on the link below:

http://richarddsolomonsblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/introduction-to-wordle-as-word-collage.html

How can word clouds enhance instruction?

According to http://21centuryedtech.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/108-ways-to-use-word-clouds-in-the-classroom-word-clouds-in-education-series-part-2/ word clouds can be used to enhance instruction in the following ways:

to brain storm a topic or create a discussion either inside the class or online
to teach vocabulary
to promote reading comprehension
to highlight important ideas from a discussion or a video content
to motivate students about a new topic to be learned
to enable students to demonstrate their understanding of a concept or complex idea
to share student expectations about a topic or classroom behavior
to build classroom community by placing the names of all the students in a class with a word cloud