Wordle

Wordle is a website designed to make "word clouds." And while there may be a tad more uses for it in, say, an English class than a math class, there are several uses for this word-cloud-making site.

Wordle is a some Java program (don't ask me for specifics...Java is still a little foreign language to me!) that allows you to type in a cluster of words (as many as you want). After you press "submit," Wordle turns the words and phrases you typed into a creative word cloud!

You can customize the colors and fonts, and play with the spacing until it looks right to you. (Wordle automatically spaces the words, but you can keep shuffling it until it meets your standards.)

Besides being fun, creative, and different, what are the uses for Wordle?

1. Students can create a Wordle with words that describe themselves on the first day of school. These word clouds could be displayed around the room, used as binder covers, and help the everyone get to know each other. 
2. Students can pick one character from a novel and type in everything they know about that character (personality traits, physical traits, background, education, work history, etc.). It gives a unique look on a novel's character, and is a little more fun than a simple character sketch!
3. Before reading a short story (or something else short -- say, an act or scene from a play?), students could type the short story into the Wordle box. Wordle naturally takes the words that appear the most and makes them largest in the word cloud. So after typing in the story (which works on typing skills), students could view the Wordle and see which words/phrases are most used. This allows them to see key terms and look up any words they don't yet understand. 
4. After reading, students could summarize what they learned (or what they know) into a Wordle cloud. They could do this for a textbook (summarize what the lesson/chapter was about), or for a novel (summarize the main theme, character, tone, etc). 
5. Create word clouds of rules or students' names and post them in your classroom -- cheap and easy decorations!

Here, here, and here are some more ideas on how to use Wordle in your classroom (I particularly love the second link!)

Although I'm most familiar and comfortable with Wordle and Tagxedo, here's a list that contains 8 other word cloud generators...you know, in case you like to have some options. ;) 

Below is a Wordle I created for my English classroom: