Monday, March 28, 2011

My Blog As A Word Cloud

I wasn´t able to attend Dave Dodgson´s (@davedogson) presentation at the VRT11 conference but thanks to Cecilia Lemos (@ceciELT), I've been able to learn about it. Cecilia wrote an insightful post in her blog, Box of Chocolates, about Dave's presentation on the use of word clouds in the classroom and accepted Dave's challenge, which she shared in her post. Well, I've accepted joining it and this is the result:


 Wordle: My blog
It's been funny to see the result, which is mainly based on the song I shared "Hey, Soul Sister".
I guess, in a way my messages are directed to my soul sisters (or brothers) among my readers.
"Cecilia" and "Vicky" also appear, my Twitter soul sisters. The word "students" is also highlighted, 
which is suitable as I often have my students in mind and I do my best to motivate them to learn.  
"Learning" stands out and it shows my attitude in life as a life-long learner. "Teacher" is seen several
times and it reflects my inborn vocation. "Languages" and "Challenge" have similar importance in the cloud.
I love languages and learning languages is a challenge.

6 comments:

  1. Loved it Marisa! Your cloud certainly has more words than mine and a wide variety of them at that. It only shows how diverse your posts (and I can only assume classes as well) are :-)

    I think we should keep in mind to do the same exactly 6 months from now and compare clouds... It'd be interesting since it only uses your last posts. One thing that called my attention in your cloud (but I had already noticed in mine too) is that if you have the same word but only in lowercase and with the initial upper they consider it 2 different words. I wonder how much bigger "Hey" would be in yours ;-)

    Really flattered (and enormously happy) to have appeared in your cloud...and right next to sister!

    XX Ceci

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  2. Thanks for your thoughtful comment, Ceci! You're right as to your observation. I love this challenge and take the opportunity to thank you for it once more.
    It'd be lovely to repeat the experience and analyse the new word cloud. It's a great way of reflecting on our posts, that is our teaching-learning experience and on our lives.
    Hugs!
    Marisa

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  3. Hi Marisa,

    Thanks for joining the challenge and sharing your reflections. In response to what Cecilia said about the same word appearing seperately in different cases, there is an option to 'make all words lower case' in Wordle before you publish the cloud.

    I'm glad you are both interested in re-taking the challenge at a later date. Perhaps we could do it once every three or four months with a different person 'hosting' the challenge each time by posting all the links on their blog.

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  4. Hello David,

    Thanks for your suppport and for sharing this creative tool in a challenging way.

    Your idea of organising the challenge hosting sounds sensible and it'll be a pleasure to participate.
    Regards,
    Marisa

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  5. I definitely think that this is a good reflective concept Marisa ~ Language is a Challenge for sure ~ just stepping back and thinking about it a valuable process.

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  6. Thanks for your comment! I agree with you.
    Regards,
    Marisa

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