In this post, I am going to look at Wordle, Wordsift , Word it out and Word Mosaic and try to briefly compare them as I think they all have great potential for a variety of learning activities. This post was inspired by a great discussion in the SEETA course on EasyWeb 2.0 tools run by Nik Peachey and as the course is still available for viewing, I would encourage everyone to visit the related section (as well as the rest of the sections) to find many more great ideas on these tools.

Wordle

This is perhaps the most popular of all these three tools and, I think with good reason. Wordle creates word clouds from any text that you paste into it ommitting structural words and keeping content words. It also chooses size by the frequency of  use of a word in a text, so can easily show the main theme of a text.

The word clouds are visually very pleasing and there is a great variety of colour combinations, fonts and cloud shapes that you can choose from. Here is one I made from a poem I found here.

Whether you want to use it prior to reading or as stimulus to speaking or writing activities, Wordle is versatile and visually quite powerful. It’s also possible to include phrases, simply by inserting the symbol ~ between two words (e.g. do~the~shopping will cause these words to appear as a phrase in a Wordle).

Wordsift

Wordsift makes word clouds like wordle, and although these clouds are not so visually pretty or impressive as the ones you can make on Wordle, there is a lot more potential for language activities and for language exploration by the learners working in an independent way. Words can be sorted by frequency, alphabetically and there are options for identifying which words belong to the General Sevice List or the Academic Word List or to particular fields like science, maths, etc. It is also connected to the Visual Thesaurus, and for any of the words in the cloud are clicked, the related entry and related pictures and videos appear below the word cloud, allowing for further exploration.  Here is the cloud created from the same poem.

Although this word cloud does not look as visually pleasing as the Wordle word cloud, still, if you click the “Create Workspace” link, you can drag and drop any of the words you like from the word cloud above and combine them in whatever way you think is more appropriate. You can even drag and drop any of the pictures which appear for a more powerful visual effect. Here is the “Workspace” I created from the word cloud above.

As you may note, I grouped words in a different way to what they appeared originaly around the main word-concept of the poem.

For both of these tools, Russell Stannard has created a great tutorial video which you can access here. Russell also mentions various great uses for both these tools!

To save images, there is no embed function on either of the two websites, but you can save them by using the screen capture tool and then crop off the image in a picture editor.

Word Mosaic

Word Mosaic is a tool which fills a limited number of shapes with the words you paste.  Despite its limitations it may look prettier for certain types of lessons or learners.

You can use it in pretty much the same way you can use Wordle for prediction or text recreation, but this one seems to me also quite suitable for poetry writing prior to reading it or to doing same with song lyrics. Here is one I made with the words of the same poem.

This is more of a shape filler tool and no matter how many or few words you put in, the application will repeat them enough times to fill the shape you have selected, so finding the prime number of words for the image to contain just the words you want it to may take some time.

Word Mosaic allows embedding into your website or blog post.

Word it out

I learnt about Word it out from Richard Byrne’s blog Free Technology for Teachers This produces highly editable word clouds where you can choose the shape of the cloud, the colours of the backrhound and the different fonts but you are also allowed choices of which words to include, remove, make smaller or bigger.

Here is the cloud from the same poem.    You can view it only by clicking on this link.

The website does not allow embedding or screen captures so although I went through the motions of it, I ended up with a blue image showing the logo of Word it out!

Here is a quick comparison chart of all four tools.

N.B. The only one which requires registration is Word it Out.

A Lesson

Here is a lesson example using Wordle – it is one I wrote for the SEETA course  - I think I still like Wordle more than the others visually. The text was to be chosen randomly (in case you were wondering why I chose this particular one).

Text source: A news item from the BBC website with the following unlikely topic and title:

Missing San Francisco sea Lions “off Oregon”

Before Students Read

While Students Read

Ask your student to…

After Reading Activities

Any more ideas?

Before they read

1. Show the headline for some quick guesswork and any vocabulary needed

2. Show the wordle and get groups to use ALL the words to write an article on the topic of the headline – imagination running free. (1st draft)

3. Groups write read out their articles or post on the wall for other groups to visit and read.

4. Play video from link above (with sound off) and discuss similarities or differences with own ideas

While they read

1. Read news story online or on handout and compare. Class votes which story closest.

2. Any comprehension work teacher thinks suited to level of class for gist, scanning, etc

4. Some language focused work on article. Ss can choose and highlight any words or phrases they liked from article and notice how they were used; can be invited to compare with own use of vocab and make any comments

After they read

Students can be asked to do any of the following activities

1. Act out and videotape interviews with sea lion experts

2. Do some web search and find more facts or details to pad out original article

3. Improve their own articles by recombining groups and doing some rewriting

4. Improvise the script for the video (which they haven’t heard yet) Add it by using some other tool which allows you to do voiceover but right now escapes me – though it might be hard to download BBC videos but can be done perhaps with other videos

5. Find some information on the web (even in their own language) about some other animal migrating habits and create a text, video, wordle similar project which they can bring to class for a follow up lesson.

Most learners enjoy playing games; most teachers use games convinced of their value for language learning.  This short, post aims to give you ideas for games which deal with subject matter which  is usually considered ‘ heavy’ or ‘ very serious’ and not usually dealt with in such a light-hearted way! The games below are not all original; some will be familiar to the readers, others are adaptations of well-known games.

In the same way, I hope you will be inspired to create your own games or adaptations of games.

1 Call my Bluff

This is a variation of the original game which is popular in various countries in which the players listen to definitions or explanations of words, some of which can be very funny but also quite longwinded. Here is an example if you are not familiar with the show.

Why:  To revise vocabulary; to encourage using it in a sentence  to develop lookup dictionary skills  (upper levels)

Materials needed – dictionaries, pen, paper or alternatives

How:  Each group is given 5-6 words and a dictionary or access to online dictionaries & thesauruses; they are encouraged  to look up the words and write four (or three, or two, up to the teacher) sentences all of which contain the word, three used incorrectly. When the groups are ready for the ‘ confrontation’ stage, each students reads out one of the four sentences and the opposing groups have to pick out the one who has read the correct sentence.

Players try to trick opposing team into selecting sentence in which the vocabulary in used inappropriately or inaccurately and collect points for one’s team or group.

Note - this game also develops awareness of syntax and develops creative thinking needed to make incorrect sentences plausible!

You can ask your students to use definitions too, as in the original game, but try to keep them relatively short, as this can be quite a time consuming game.

2 Snap

Why: to revise grammatical categories e.g. phrasal/ multiword verbs followed by gerund or infinitive, irregular verbs, plurals/ adjectives etc. or to revise lexical areas such as collocation, derivatives etc.

Materials are sets of cards with possible match ups depending on focus, e.g. if practising phrasal verbs, make cards with lots of verbs and prepositions.

How: The cards are dealt out equally to the members of the group. Each player puts down a card. If the next player has a card that matches the top card on the table, s/he must shout “Snap!”  to get that card and make a pair. To win you must try to collect as many pairs as possible and be left without any cards

Note – this can be quite a noisy game but it’s lots of fun!

3 Grammar Consequences

Why: to practise the parts of speech; to make even younger learners aware of them in a ‘ painless’ way; to practise editing & correcting

How: The teacher writes an example sentence on the board as well what part of speech it is like this:

Then the class plays a game of consequences; each student writes a word called out by the teacher, folds the paper over, passes it on to the next student, then the teacher calls out another word category, etc. When the sentence is finished all open papers, look, edit, correct their sentences and the funniest ones are read out.

Note - The editing stage is a good time to go round and help fix the grammar, e.g. articles, prepositions, auxiliaries, verb tenses.

4 Noughts & Crosses (or Tic Tac Toe)

Why: to revise areas of vocabulary or different aspects  of words; or to revise areas of grammar or anything else you like!!!

Materials Board

How: The teacher nominates the squares / boxes as desired in a Noughts & Crosses grid (e.g. if practicing phrasal verbs, each square is filled with a preposition) and teams call out the category they want to do. The teacher then asks a question which must be answered for the team to get their X or O in that position.

Here is an example with various phrasal verbs with  ’off’ (or other preposition);  the teacher or opposing team can call out the meaning.

To win, each team must put their three X’s or O’s across, down or diagonally.

This is a good game to get the students to write the questions for the other team.

5 Taboo

Taboo Game

Why: Taboo is a commercially produced game which exercises verbal skills of paraphrasing, circomlocuting, as well as flexible & quick thinking; if you have one, you may try to use it, but you can also make your own taboo cards which will focus on vocabulary areas you have covered.

Materials: Sets of cards  with target word& words to avoid using in defining target word

How: Cards are placed face down. One member of each team is asked to pick a card and describe the target word to his team without mentioning any of the other words listed on the card.

Points are won for words guessed within time limit.

The winning team is the one with the highest number of points at the end the game.

The opposing team acts as referee to check that words listed are are not used while a player is trying to describe the word to their team.

Note - This is quite a demanding game, even for native speakers but well worth investing some time to give the learners some useful language for paraphrasing or describing.

A very nice way of creating a more  ’rounded’ lesson with this material, might be to record yourself and a colleague playing a few rounds, and using this as a listening, to get the students to ‘notice’ what type of language was used in trying to avoid particular words.

6. Proficiency Pursuit

This is a great game which I described in a post a couple of months ago and is based on the well known Trivial Pursuit game

If you would like to read about how to use with your classes, click on the link below to read the post.

TEFL Pursuits

Other games which fall in with “serious fun”

My Visual Delights and Spike Milligan post is in very much the same vein, although some people might object to that particular activity having anything to do with ‘heavy’ or ‘boring’ language areas…. but I don’t know… I think it’s up to the teacher to turn an activity this way or that and make it do whatever it is they want it to do.

The other post which is also related, is my “Yes, and… “ post to which similar comments apply as for the activity in my Visual Delights post.

I hope you can find some games you can use in this listing, and if you have any great ideas, I would love to hear about them!

Have some serious fun!

…… A few days ago, during the International House DOS conference, the talks were made available online and there was a somewhat heated discussion about Hugh Dellar’s presentation which came under the title of “The Curse of Creativity”

You can watch the whole presentation if you follow this link. The talk lasts for about an hour and I did sit through the whole of it.

On the same day, another talk on creativity was retweeted, one of the TED talks which most of my readers will have heard. The title is “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” and it is a much shorter talk, about 20 minutes, by Sir Ken Robinson. But the length of this talk is not why I would recommend it so warmly to everyone in my PLN and not recommend the previous one.  You may wish to listen to both before proceeding further.

Here are some of the tweets from the day I wrote this post and some from the day when the talk was first “aired”.

I do seem to have been terribly annoyed with Mr Dellar, don’t I?

The two speakers represent two extremes for me both in terms of what I think of their views on creativity as well as in other ways.

Hugh Dellar and his Curse of Creativity talk

Hugh Dellar’s talk promotes a highly negative attitude towards the need for any teacher to be creative. To support his argument, he draws a lot of what he considers to be evidence of the lack of necessity for creativity from various trainee teacher observations, most of which, always in my view of course, are evidence of misinterpreting some principle of planning or a misunderstanding about materials design. This is what trainee teachers often do, that is why they are called trainees and not expert practitioners or teacher educators or materials writers, like Mr Dellar.

And yet, he seems to believe that on the basis of this rather shaky evidence, which his audience accepts with great mirth and on which they all have a rather good laugh, the rest of the world has to buy the idea that teachers do not need to develop or enhance their creative thinking skills and that the call for being creative, has made your average poor teacher go bananas when they plan lessons and in their desperate pursuit of creative activities, well, they will use just about anything.

Sir Ken Robinson and his Do Schools Kill Creativity talk

Over on the other side, Ken Robinson, presents a completely different stance towards the need for creativity. His talk is not about the need for teachers to be creative; what he talks about is the absolute necessity for equipping learners with creative thinking skills since, as he suggests, as educators, we are preparing them for a future none of us can foresee.

His talk does not deal with quite the same angle  – i.e. on whether teachers need to be creative or not.  He talks about all students today whom we are preparing to be adults in an unknown tomorrow.

But it is not very difficult for anyone with brains other that pea-size to extrapolate from this and understand why everyone, including educators, needs to develop or enhance their creative thinking potential, for dealing with the unpredictable and new, a task which educators have to face on an every day and every minute of teaching basis in every class they teach.

Other Reactions to both presenters

There are other reasons why Mr Dellar annoys me beyond telling as a speaker. Apart from being totally uninformed as to what constitutes creativity and what we need it for in our daily lives, let alone in the demanding profession of being an educator and apart from using examples which do not prove his points, he commits another faux pas, that of having a very good laugh at the expense of his trainee teachers. OK, we got it that he is a great teacher educator and that he works for a particular teacher education centre which he is probably marketing in some way.

Personally, and if I were in need of some training, I would not touch this centre with a bargepole for fear of having my teaching endeavours ridiculed in all his future talks.

Mr Dellar also fails to laugh at himself entirely. When he is not laughing at his ex or current trainee teachers, he is being quite perscriptive and serious about how useless it is to be a creative teacher. I suppose he is hopeful that all need for creativity is satisfied if only we were to use the coursebooks he has authored.

Contrary to this rather smug and self-satisfied style, Ken Robinson, presents a short and very pithy talk in which most of the jokes are directed against himself and no one else.

I find this extremely refreshing. He not only drives the point home about how important it is to be creative but he also gains the sympathy of his audience by exhibiting his great sense of  humour – a type of humour that I am certain most of my readers will appreaciate a lot. He has other great qualities, of pausing for just the right amount of time, of having a great sense of rhythm and pace, etc.. etc… I think it was also my musician’s ear that loved this talk and the same ear which cringed at the other one….

On the “day of the tweets” above, I  must say I was not the only one to exhibit this very negative reaction towards Mr Dellar. Many others expressed similar views and some, even worse.

So may be we should start thinking about being good presenters and speakers already!  The conference season has started and some of us will be going here and there presenting papers, workshops etc.

So, what are the qualities of a good speaker?

I am inviting the members of my PLN to express their views here of what are some of the qualities of a great or very good presenter/speaker. It would also be great if we could put together a red hot list of people we should all try to go and listen to, whether they are native or non native speakers, whether they are male or female.

It would also be nice to know who to avoid.

I already have one on my list – Mr. Dellar – but there are others, too, and not for exactly the same reasons. For example, although I have great respect for what David Nunan has written, after having listened to him speak at the most recent TESOL Greece conference, I would never ever attempt to sit through one of his talks again.

Please come forth and declare your preferences.  I could use the advice!

P.S.  I have opted not to discuss the concept of teachers needing to be creative in this post at any great depth or length. My interest was in commenting two different styles of presentation and their impact on me.

If interested in reading more about this topic, may I ask you to read an article I wrote quite a while ago about the why’s and how’s of teachers being creative. The title is “The Art of Being Creative” and in my talk in April 2010 at IATEFL in Harrogate, I will be talking about activities that will help our learners develop their creative thinking abilities.

… I have always loved the scene where Bridget Jones comes up with her famous 33 New Year’s Resolutions. What a great scene that was and I can’t remember how many nice lessons, by the way,  I have watched with trainees using this clip to teach this or that, sometimes the future, sometimes just to generate talk and practise listening! Here is the book cover with some of Bridget’s resolutions, which can be used in a lead in with or without the video clip. There are many great lessons round this theme to be found on the web too. Here is one from the English Blog. The same post includes a great downloadable lesson from the Macmillan site and here is another one (which looks very much like a DELTA lesson plan) from http://www.developingteachers.com  (a website well worth exploring). This last one brings Adrian Mole in, as well, a great combination for a theme-based lesson with a literary aim.

My own New Year’s Resolutions – sorry they’re not as much fun as Bridget’s…

Well, everyone seems to be making a list and this is my very first public one. A public list is a kind of commitment, but I am not all that sure that I can achieve all of my resolutions in just one year… Still, here they are ( In categories. Isn’t that so like me? )

Professionally

• I have been moving things from my old DELTA website to a new DELTA wiki and this move seems to be lasting forever! I want to get this done within the first two months of 2010 at most! I want my wiki to be the best possible support tool for my candidates and am debating whether it might not be a good idea to make it open to everyone.
• I say this to myself every year, but I would like to be able to find the time, energy and motivation to put together some of my ideas in a book and get published! I have had books published before, albeit locally, and they were hugely successful but I would like to go for a major international publisher. Am waiting to be discoverd and am open to offers!
• In 2010 I would like to be able to organize my centre more efficiently so I don’t have to be there all the time and then I can accept some of the invitations to run teacher training courses and workshops in other countries! So far, it has been quite difficult to do although I have managed some projects – but not enough and this is something I have enjoyed doing and would like to be able to do more of.
• In the coming year I want to be able to restructure my courses and integrate new technologies into each one more efficiently than I have so far. Wiki-work is one way but there are other challenges and changes which I need to figure out so that I can draw in even those trainees who seem to be reluctant to be drawn in… and colleagues, too, for that matter!

Virtually

• 2009 was my first contact with Second Life. Before the end of 2010, I want to be able to teach and train teachers in Second Life. So far, I have met some great people and made some wonderful friends, I have learnt a tiny, but very tiny, bit of building and editing objects, thanks to the SLexperiments weekly meetings but I need to take the plunge and do some teaching. I have this impression that quite a bit of the teaching that takes place in Second Life is accompanied by rather complicated and hard to prepare materials and I don’t think it should. I don’t think I should be preparing an extra super-duper thingie for a whole week to only use for one hour’s class. Surely, Second Life itself and all it offers IS the tool and the teaching aid itself, isn’t it? Well, I need to find out if I am wrong and early in the New Year, expect an invitation from me for an online class in Beginner Modern Greek. If the class consists of educators, we can turn it into a grand Negotiable Syllabus and Methodology Experiment. What do you think?
• In the coming year, I want to improve my online presentation skills. Presenting online is a new skill for me; I tried it once but wasn’t very happy with myself; it’s a new medium for me and although I am a very experienced speaker “live”, I need more practice for online work. My friends can prepare to suffer as I do intend to do something about it.

Personally

• One of the members of my PLN recently told me “My personal life is very quiet; my online life is much richer and much more exciting”. At the time, I thought that was a rather odd comment but now, I am beginning to find some truth in this too and wonder if this is not the right time for some stocktaking. It’s truly great to have all these online friends, but I must look after my offline friendships and relationships more. I may be going through some kind of initial phase which a media analyst could even put a name to (the addictive phase?) but I need to put the whole thing into perspective. This goes for my relationships with my trainees, too. I recently caught myself (luckily only once) telling a trainee “Well, can we do this through Skype?” when – in retrospect – all my trainee needed was some eye contact, sympathy and reassurance. Luckily I am always very suspicious of myself and my own motives, so I just need to watch out like a hawk!
• In 2010 I want to attend more conferences in person. Online conferences are great too and I want to do loads of them. But attending conferences in person gives you a wonderfully different buzz, listening to other people’s ideas and even looking at old ideas from a new angle is always a great energizer for and I want more of this!!! But more than anything, I am beginning to feel the need to meet the members of my PLN in person!

…..and finally…

Artistically

• I have not done any watercolour paintings recently, an art form which I have come to love. I need to find more time for this, I need to find more time for this…
• In the coming year, I want to learn more about art in Second Life and explore more Sims that showcase new types of art.  I was recently taken to a couple of fabulous places by Karelia Kondor, who looks after Helen Myers in real life and I was totally blown away! That’s actually not such a big deal resolution and quite an easy one to achieve!
• Producing and putting together some music that I have written has always been a secret ambition. Whether I put it up on You Tube or perform it for my friends in Second Life, I don’t know…. but I can see this coming. Luckily, in Second Life all you can see is an avatar, so you are spared the pained expressions on your friends’ faces. This is a warning. When you receive that invitation, best stay away rather than suffer!

I am truly grateful to my readers for taking the time to follow this blog and post comments. Although I began it in some doubt and the first couple of months went by with me worrying what I should be writing next, it is beginning to come to me a bit more easily now (writing breeds writing and, sometimes, even good writing!)

And I wish all of you, passers by and members of my PLN, a most joyous time on this special New Year’s Eve and every success and personal and professional happiness you may have ever wished for!

Last night I was trying to think of a Christmas message for this blog to show my feelings to you all and to send you my wishes. Right as i was searching for a suitable picture and thinking about the right words, I received this e-card from a friend.

I was struck by the simplicity and power of the message because that is exactly how I feel myself about this friend and about you who are reading this because I have invited you to, and about you who are reading this and may also one day get to know me through a comment on my blog, through Twitter, by sharing information and interacting with me, on Facebook, by being my friend and staying in touch, by meeting in Second Life where I am beginning to be a “regular” with a network of educator friends who teach and train.

The friend who sent this to me is part of my PLN (Personal Learning Network) and you can read a lot about this on the web but this morning’s reading is going to be Shelly Terrell’s beautiful post on the same topic; she expresses her feelings and my own so well.

As I write these lines, I am listening to a lecture delivered by Noam Chomskywhich was tweeted by @kipyellowjacket. Weird? Well, each to their own and to me that’s the most normal thing in the world….

I’m laughing at @carolrainbow’s joke (Question “What are Santa’s helpers called?”…..Answer: “Subordinate Clauses”) …Yeah, yeah, I know this may not sound funny to the rest of the world, but to me and to my friends in English Language teaching and education it’s a fabulous pun! (Even my brother thinks I’m weird, so what else is new?)

I am looking at my Facebook page with its shower of hearts and Christmas trees and small notes from friends to show me they are connected with me and I think what a wonderful year this has been and how my life and my learning has been enriched  by all of you and of how much more I have to look forward to!

Have a Wonderful Christmas, a Fabulous 2010 and please stay connected!

Without all of you around, life would not be so much fun, learning would not be half as exciting and I do need you all!

Special thanks to all those who engaged me in the first place and it is now my turn to try and engage as many as I can.

My Christmas Stocking is up but I feel it’s already full so Santa and his Subordinate Clauses will really have a hard time squeezing in their (very expensive I hope) gifts to me!!!