Word Clouds in the SOCIAL STUDIES Clasroom

Ways to Use Word Clouds in the Classroom - by Michael Gorman 

http://www.wordle.net/

http://www.tagxedo.com/

http://wordsift.com/

Social Studies

1. Use a word cloud to compare, contrast, discuss, and analyze two presidential speeches. Remember that you can use a word count to analyze and even graph use of popular words.
2. Use a word cloud to compare, contrast, discuss, and analyze two state or country constitutions. Remember that you can use a word count to analyze and even graph use of popular words.
3. Use a word cloud to compare, contrast, discuss, and analyze persuasive speeches in history. Remember that you can use a word count to analyze and even graph use of popular words.
4. Using statistical information from a place such as CIA World Fact Book create word clouds that illustrate country statistics such as resources, ethnic groups, religions, languages, etc.  You may wish to use advanced number feature to illustrate prominence of each.
5. Create a word cloud to illustrate how countries of the world (or states in a country) rank with related themes such as oil production, GDP, industries, languages, etc.  The heading would be the resource and countries would be in the word cloud showing their rank by size.  There could be other variations. Use advanced number feature.
6. Have students create a word cloud that represents geographic ideas such as: oceans of the world or continents of the world.
7. Show a word cloud of different geographic features in their size relationship. Example: Famous Volcanoes.
8. Create a word cloud of famous documents and treaties in history. Have students analyze and discuss.
9. Have students create a word cloud of biographies of famous people in history.
10. Remember that you can use a word count to analyze and even graph use of popular words.
11. Create word clouds to illustrate a period of time or events on a timeline.
12. Wordle a newspaper or magazine article for a current event. A transcript from a radio, television, internet interview, podcast, etc, could also be useful for a class discussion or individual analysis.