Useful Idea

Discover one interesting way to use word cloud for learning :D
All the while, I thought word cloud is just a fanciful way to present text that made up a passage - as a "decor" to the website. It has never crossed my mind that it has a place in T&L.

Tapping of the fact that the size of each word is dependent on its number of occurence, relative to other words. The most frequently occurred word will be given the most 'airspace'.
Hence, in a way, gives us an idea the key emphasis of a passage.

Have made an attempt using our school's website - the Overview of our Curriculum and I get this (click at image to see enlarged version at Wordle site):


So, key words that catch people's attention when they read the Overview are "Students", "Learning", "SST", "Integrated Approach"... Oops! Where's applied learning? Where's Technology? Where's Science?

Here's another attempt based on the number of times each word I entered into the textbox:


Potential for T&L:
(1) Summary - Generate a word cloud to surface key words/emphasis to have some notion what the passage is all about first before reading
(2) Writing - To check whether we have put in enough emphasis on the areas we want to highlight in a message.
(3) Visual - one way to do a communicate key messages across - with key words that we want people to takeaway.