Wordsift: One click words cloud

    In the past, when I was looking for some material, I have seen some people sharing and using some keywords as the effect of the tag cloud of the imaging site. This is actually called the word cloud. Through an article, we can find the keywords and the higher the frequency of its appearance in the article, the greater the size of keywords will be. Recently, Tilly officially introduced a platform that can quickly generate a beautiful word cloud with one click.

In the "WordSift" text cloud platform, there are many built-in styles that can be applied, and even customizable to create text cloud angles, color combinations and fonts, resulting in quite distinctive word cloud. In addition, it allows text to have different size changes, which means that the word cloud can be used whether in ppt or on a web page.

First, after entering the website of the word cloud, put the text you want to make in the input box at the top.

 

Then, type a paragrap or text to create a word cloud

You could change the pattern or words in the picture

Usage in classrooms

The first place that I think is better for WordSift is improve students’ vocabulary. In fact, research shows that students who have broad vocabularies achieve better scores on standardized tests and classroom assessments than students who have limited vocabularies. Word clouds are an excellent way to help our students develop their vocabulary. This method is particularly useful when analyzing characters in books. For example, how many times have you seen a particular word from a book?  Ask students to write a list of traits for characters in the novel they are studying. Then, ask them to use a wordsift to come up with a list of synonyms, and feed them into a word cloud generator to create an excellent point of reference.

Secondly, in reading class. Take a section from a text and drop it into a wordsift generator. Ask them to think about the questions they would like to ask about the text and what they think the text may be about. This is a great way to teach and assess their abilities to: understand the text, retrieve information. Bring instant focus to class discussions by asking students to narrow the theme of a single chapter, essay, speech, article, book, or poem down to a single word. This is a great way to help students prepare to write their own essays and research papers. It also makes for lively class discussions as students defend their one-word theme submissions.

Thirdly, WordSift can also be used to create a simple map for brainstorm. Word clouds are the perfect scratch pad for brainstorming solutions with a group of students. Use this activity to start a new unit, or to help students find new approaches to an old problem. Depending on your plan, you can set the number of responses per student from one to unlimited.

What’s ICT?

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Drawbacks

Wordsift is still in developing. One of its disadvantage is that the word cloud it creates is fixed, which could be better if it can be adjust according to the content.
Conclusion
Wordsift is a effective tool in particular teaching situation if used properly