Wordle and discussion

I use the Wordle tool for each chapter's discussion topic to do a couple of things. It creates an interesting image that is generated by the words my students type in their discussion entries. It also highlights the words that were most commonly used, which helps me assess what interests them and write questions for exams.

I try to come up with a color scheme that matches the chapter in some way, and Adobe's Kuler web site is a great way to generate color values from an important image for that chapter. Wordle's settings I use include mostly horizontal, rounder edges, and maximum 75 words. I also leave the words as spelled and remove numbers. I open the Java applet in its own window and capture the screen at about 1300 x 800 pixels. On my Mac this makes a PNG file, which I upload as a new content item in Desire2Learn.

We'll see if my students appreciate it.

http://www.wordle.net/
http://kuler.adobe.com/