Week 1 Reflection

Word Cloud or Wordle:

This week we learnt how to create a word cloud/wordle using the 'WordItOut' site.  The first step was to come up with a list of words you felt related to the Design and Digital Technologies Curriculum.  I had a range of words but some which stood out for me were innovation, investigation, sustainability, explore and play.  This words were key ideas for me as although the Design topic area requires planning and critical thinking it also requires students to be creative, innovative, explorative and consider the ethics and sustainability factors related to their design.  The other element to the Technologies curriculum is Digital Technologies some key words that stood out for me in relation to this were ICT, computational thinking and understanding.  In this area students are required to "identify, use and explore digital systems" (ACARA, n.d.) and this requires computational thinking expertise in the ICT area and understanding of the different systems and their purpose.

Once I had created this list of words I typed them into the box on 'WordItOut' and pressed create and then the site developed a word cloud using my words in a range of different colours and fonts.  After the original template was developed I could go back and edit fonts and colours until I was satisfied with the end result.  I could then save this word cloud and email it to myself for future use.  I think that this program would be useful in the classroom when students are brainstorming about a new topic as they could complete individual word clouds and then come back together as a class and see which words were common, and from here the teacher could use these words in a word cloud created on the interactive whiteboard.  In this way students have an opportunity to use ICT and brainstorm alone, and then work collaboratively to ascertain what the overarching ideas for the topic area are as a class.  

In addition, there are other benefits to using a word cloud related to catering for different students learning styles.  According to Howard Gardener and his theory of multiple intelligences there are eight different intelligence areas which are musical/rhythmic, visual/spatial, verbal/linguistic, logical/mathematical, bodily/kinaesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic (White, Hayes & Livesey, 2013).  Using this word cloud function would assist those students who learn best through visual representation and using something like this in association with written text, 'hands-on' kinaesthetic opportunities and a range of other activities including music or drama which blends the intelligences for one topic area would assist students to gain maximum learning potential within the classroom.