Thursday, November 27, 2008

I'm 'it' - thoughts on Wordle

So, here it is the morning of 'Awakening Possibilities' and I've got a million and one things to do. However, the first thing I saw in my Twitter feed was that I'd been tagged by John Evans in a Wordle meme. Since this is my first time being tagged in a meme, I felt I better make this a priority.

I've used Wordle several times in the past to create these unique word clouds. However, I've never created a Wordle with a blog RSS feed. I didn't realize that it was so easy to do this directly within Wordle.

This wordle was created with the RSS feed of this blog:

Image Source - http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/346188/TECH_Talks

But, I also went on to create a Wordle with the RSS feed of another blog that I've been spending more time with as of late. This one's based on the IGNITE@Brooklands blog, which has been a space for 9 and 10 years olds to reflect on their experiences as they take part in a 3-day IGNITE Camp, designed to promote interest in technology and engineering.


I wanted to see how the two Wordles differed based on the target audiences. You see, TECH Talks is my professional blog, whereas the focus of IGNITE@Brooklands is the elementary students who are involved with IGNITE Camp.

As soon as I saw each of my Wordles appear before my eyes, two things became immediately apparent:

1) It's amazing how accurately Wordle captures the main focus and concepts. It's so obvious to see where my current interests lay, and it forces me to reflect on how my understanding of these concepts is taking shape :-)
Link
2) The language that is used is so different dependent on the two target audiences.

Thanks for including me in this meme, John. It's always good to take the time to reflect on your own learning and understanding. It's all about 'Awakening Possibilities' that exist with all of the emerging technologies that we have available...

2 comments:

John Evans said...

Awesome post Andy!

Wordle is so very cool and easy to use. Hoping more and more educators can see its potential.

Cheers

John

Lee Kolbert said...

Hi Andy,
I'm so glad you took the torch as passed to you by John. I started this Meme and it's such a thrill to read other bloggers' reflections on their own Wordles. ~Lee