Have you played with Wordle? Well, I finally had a chance to explore this free tool for
generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.I inserted my blog address and ended up with the Wordle above which confirms a commitment to putting Students and Learning first. Those two words are the most prominent in the writings of my blog, followed by "recommendations" and "research." I am excited to see that the message I am trying to convey through my blog is corroborated by a fun tool.
Consider trying this amusing exercise with your students after they have completed a written assignment.
You both may be surprised by the results. And you just might get lengthier written work from your previously reluctant writers.