Sunday, October 9, 2011

Wordle vs. WordSift

While reading the eVoc Strategies article,  "eVoc Strategy 1: Learn From Visual Displays of Word Relationships Within Text" stood out to me. In that section they talked about Wordle, which is a great tool for looking at the frequency and importance of words in given text. They also mentioned WordSift which has a similar concept to Wordle. While Wordle is cutamizable in shape, color, layout, etc., in WordSift "each word can be clicked on to show a collection of related images, a word map, and a listing of sentences from the text that present the word in different contexts." I wanted to see the differences for myself so I used the Preamble to the Constitution in each generator and this is what I got...

Wordle:
Wordle: We the People








WordSift:

While I love the creativity of Wordle, I really think that the word maps could be so beneficial to students. Wordle is definitely more well known, but which do you prefer?
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3 comments:

  1. StephanieOctober 9, 2011 at 8:00 PM

    Great Post- I love your example! I actually just completed a project in TPTE 486- we had to complete a wiki and ours was on Wordle so I am pretty familiar with how it works :)

    In answer to your question I think it depends on what your goal is when using programs like Wordle and WordShift- as well as the age. WordShift has the neat feature of the word web/thesaurus that I think would be a great tool for older elementary kids to use when learning vocabulary. However, I like the options and customization that Wordle has. My little sister used Wordle last year in third grade to make a word cloud out of words she would use to describe her self.

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  2. Megan BramesOctober 15, 2011 at 3:44 PM

    I loved this example! Such a good way to encourage vocabulary development. I responded more to Wordle, I think it highlights/bolds more words and would make kids want to click on more words. I think we should try to expose children to as many words as possible! Thanks for sharing1

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  3. CourtneyOctober 16, 2011 at 2:51 PM

    I've never heard of wordsift, but in my TPTE class and in IS330 Wordle was explained as being very great for educational use! A great way to use it as an icebreaker would be to have the children type something about themselves on the first day of school. After they type up their adjectives, combine them into wordle to see what they all have in common! It's a great way to get conversations started in the classroom.

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