Visualizing+Text

**Visualizing Text: WordSift & Wordle** **WordSift**  [|WordSift] is a tool that helps you not only visualize text. As well as helping you locate key vocabulary within a text, it also allows you to mark and sort specific word lists (designed for educators), provides a visualization of word thesaurus relationships ( Visual Thesaurus ), and searches Google for images and videos. It also provides sentences where the word was used within the text. **An Overview of WordSift:**

When you go the WordSift site the home page has an empty box where you may insert text. After you paste in your text you click on “Sift” and a tag cloud will be created of the 50 most frequent words in the text (and they exclude words some words such as is, of the). This first tag cloud is alphabetical. The red arrow shows you that there are a variety of ways you may choose to sort the words. In this picture the words are sorted not only be frequency (and the size helps you determine the most frequently used words) but also alphabetically. You may chose to sort the words in a variety of ways, including most common-to-rare, rare-to-most common, alphabetically (or Z-A). You may also choose squish cloud, in which case the Images/Video area and the Visual Thesaurus move up the page (see picture below). The tag cloud will reappear when you click unsquish. In the image below the cloud has been squished. 

By squishing the cloud the Image and Video area as the Visual Thesaurus move up the page. WordSift uses Google Images to search for images of the two most commonly used words. They use Google Videos to search for videos, and the videos are accessed under the Image area. The website states “The video search results are a bit more hidden, because the results tend to be a bit more racy, sometimes offensive, and certainly distracting to students. The videos can be displayed by clicking on >Video. The YouTube videos resulting from the Google Video search is much more random. Many school districts also block YouTube, but this can be a very rewarding part of the exercise if the teacher can use it as a source of talk about language, rather than as a distraction!” WordSift also links to the Visual Thesaurus and provides a word web of the most commonly used word. Please note, Visual Thesaurus has additional features that are not available unless you pay for a subscription. If you click on the Create Workspace (see red arrow above) a blank workspace appears. You may also click on the Make Images Draggable (see blue arrow above) and this allows the user to drag images located within Google Images to the workspace. In this case, three of the images were inserted. You may remove an image by dragging it outside the workspace area.  WordSift will also search for words within the document that appear in the Tag Cloud window. Initially the sentences provided will be based on the most common word. However you may select any word within the window and the sentences will change to reflect that work.

**Additional Resources for WordSift:** Click here to watch a video tour of WordSift. Video: [|How to Use WordSift to Teach Vocabulary] <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;"> [|WordSift: Supporting Instruction and Learning through Technology in San Francisco]

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">**Wordle** <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">The [|Wordle] website states: <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">Wordle is a toy 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. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the //Wordle gallery to share with your friends.//

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">The image below includes the same text used in the WordSift image. <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">


 * || <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">Wordle allows you select the language, font, layout and color patterns. In fact, with Wordle you can insert a list of words and provide specific weight to each word. You may save your Wordle to the gallery online. I used a tool called SnagIt to save this as a jpg image.

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">And by the way, the text used here is in the new Massachusetts Framework for ELA & Literacy, and it is the text of the College & Career Readiness Standards for Grades preK – 5. || || <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">**Additional Resources** <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;"> [|52 Interesting Ways to Use Wordle in the Classroom] – this slide show has grown over the years. <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">You may also want to check out Richard Bryne’s blog [|Free Technology for Teachers]. Below are links to some of the entries has on word clouds. <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;"> [|Five Ways to Make Word Clouds from Text] <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;"> [|Turn Your Spreadsheets into Word Clouds] <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;"> [|Word It Out – Like Wordle with more Options] <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">**A Short List of Some of the College and Career Readiness Standards from the new Massachusetts Framework for ELA & Literacy that relate to WordSift and Word Clouds** <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">**//College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards from new MA ELA Frameworks//**

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">**Reading**

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">//Integration of Knowledge and Ideas//

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">7. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">**Speaking and Listening**

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">//Comprehension and Collaboration//

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">2. Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">3. Evaluate a speaker's point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric. <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">Click to download this section on [|Visualizing Text: WordSift & Wordle].