Wordle - The Word/Tag Cloud creator

Just another Jing of another Web 2.0 tool. Learn how to easily create something like this:

Enjoy!

Play Wordle Jing file 

Comments

[Barbara Knauff]

Anthony,
what a *nice* presentation - well done!!!
Barbara

[Barbara Knauff]

I wordled the CC blog:
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/427023/CC_blog

[Joshua Kim]

Anthony...amazing screencast. Could be used to teach people how to do screencasts. Everything - from content, to narration, to examples, structure - one of the best I've seen. Can you comment on your process - how long this took you to put together? - how you did it? - how you chose your structure? I'm thinking that a short document on screencasting best practices (perhaps one we do together) would be in order. In particular, I really liked your educational connections.

- Barbara...loved the word cloud for our blog -very instructive. How did you get all the text in? Wouldn't it be great if we could have a dynamic word cloud that changed as we blogged (and the comments came in?).

- Wouldn't something like Wordle hooked up to Blackboard be great! I could envision a dynamic cloud created from Blackboard blog posts, discussion board entries etc. I wonder if there is anyway to do this?

- Finally...a great use of Word clouds we have discussed is a way to get real time feedback and questions by students during lectures.....one that builds as students type questions or observations in during the class. How could we make this a reality?

Anthony...I hope your screencast gets wider currency - maybe we could add it the screencast and the process to our DCAL session...

Josh

[Anthony Helm]

Thank you both for the comments and feedback. I like your ideas for taking it further whenever possible, unfortunately, the author explains on the site that IBM owns the code, so I don't think there is much in the way of options for expanding this product's mashability. Perhaps there are other similar tools out there.

As far as the process for creating this particular screencast, I think it probably took a bit over three hours from the time I first visited the Wordle site. The first half hour I played around with the tool to get familiar with it. Thankfully, it was a fairly easy tool to pick up and use, which is why I decided to screencast it in the first place.

Once that decision was made, I started to gather some resources. In particular I needed some text and didn't feel like creating it myself. So, as usual, I headed to sources that were either public domain or royalty free. I figured the Gettysburg Address was probably a good sample of just the right length and entirely free. Google turned up the full speech. Then, since I was anticipating activities for foreign languages, initially, I chose to search Project Gutenberg for some non-English free text, eventually deciding on samples in French, Spanish and German.

The next step was to sketch out, at least in my mind, a rough outline for presenting the tool. This lead me to determine that I needed to give a very quick overview of what, exactly, word/tag clouds are. So, again I Googled for samples and eventually settled on the web sites that I chose.

Turning next to setting the stage for the screencast, I decided to prepare my browser window by prepopulating tabs with my web sites, including the Wordle site. I chose to size the window according to the needs of Wordle, that is, I wanted to have as much of the Wordle site on screen as possible to reduce the amount of scrolling needed to demo the site. The others sites I just "scroll-positioned," ready for their time on stage. In addition, I wasn't sure at first how I was going to bring in the different text samples, so I opened them up in a tabbed text editor, to make switching easy there, too.

As far as the screen capture tool, I actually ran through three before settling on Jing. I started with ScreenFlow, with the idea of "winging it" through my outline, and polishing it on the ScreenFlow timeline. Perhaps it is my aging G5 PowerMac, but ScreenFlow did not perform well. Since you cannot control what part of the screen is captured, the whole screen is recorded and the system crawls under the load. When that didn't work, I turned to SnapzPro, thinking that I would import the QuickTime output into ScreenFlow for editing. At this point, I was still thinking that I would eventually add text callouts and titles. SnapzPro has the advantage of recording just a portion of the screen. Unfortunately, thought the recording went well, the processed QuickTime files refused to open, crashing QuickTime on launch.

Plan C was Jing. By this time, too, I had decided to go back to what I know best--writing a script. My "winging it" was not working out and was going to require too much editing. I began the script at work, but finished it up at home, where I downloaded the most recent version of Jing and then prepped all my windows again.

It took me about 3 full run-throughs and 4-5 partials (the blooper reels) before I completed the finished version I have posted here.

All in all, it was less a case of "best practices" out of the gate and more one of remembering the hard way to stick with what you know. But certainly, there are elements that are worth pulling together in some sort of guideline document.

Hope that helps.

[Joshua Kim]

Anthony...thanks for going through the process.

Reading your process was almost as educational as watching the screencast.

The set of skills that you had to master to produce this screencast are, I'd argue, pretty much exactly those skills that our students need to have in the job market. The technical skills yes, but more the ability to create, communicate, and share. Your screencast brought in writing skills, production skills, communication skills, and technical skills.

To produce your screencast you needed a broad knowledge of many elements...from content to theory.

So while it took you 3 hours - I'd bet more then 10,000 hours lay behind that.

Long way of saying - screencasting is a great method for assigning work to our students. Screencasting should complement papers, oral presentations and other assessment types.

I plan to use your screencast (and your explanation of your process - fully credited) in my own teaching (both online and here at the College) - as I'm very pleased to now have a "gold standard" in the medium.

[Anthony Helm]

Quick followup: This was just posted following the Inauguration of Barack Obama. Tag clouds comparing Obama and Bush speeches.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tag_clouds_of_obamas_inaugural_speech_compared_to_bushs.php