moving benton high school towards a 21st century constructivist community
Wordling Locke
Alright, some I took some inspiration from what others have done so far with Wordle and I applied it to what I am getting ready to do in government tomorrow. Tomorrow we begin looking at the Enlightenment Thinkers and the philosophical basis for what our government was founded upon. Since John Locke gets most of the credit I began thinking of what I could do with his work. His most famous document The Second Treatise of Government is where our founding fathers drew most of the ideas about democracy from. Conveniently, it is a relatively short document, about 70 pages, so I cut and paste it into the wordle program. I was amazed at the results.....
title="Wordle: John Locke Second Treatise of Government">![]()
src="http://wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/155516/John_Locke_Second_Treatis...
So now my brain is processing all of the possible means of instruction through using this word map.
Some preliminary examples of what I could have the students do:
-analyze what power means to Locke-who has it and what do they do with it
-are there words that you are surprised to see used so often
-are there words that you are surprised to see used so little
-is it possible to create a summary of what Locke says by just using these words
-what can you infer about Locke's view of government by this map
I am hoping that this method will create some rigorous engagement with a very important document without having to read through all 70+ pages of the book. I'm open to any suggestions of what other possibilities are out there, and I'll be sure to share the results.
title="Wordle: John Locke Second Treatise of Government">
src="http://wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/155516/John_Locke_Second_Treatis...
So now my brain is processing all of the possible means of instruction through using this word map.
Some preliminary examples of what I could have the students do:
-analyze what power means to Locke-who has it and what do they do with it
-are there words that you are surprised to see used so often
-are there words that you are surprised to see used so little
-is it possible to create a summary of what Locke says by just using these words
-what can you infer about Locke's view of government by this map
I am hoping that this method will create some rigorous engagement with a very important document without having to read through all 70+ pages of the book. I'm open to any suggestions of what other possibilities are out there, and I'll be sure to share the results.
Tags: collaboration, instruction, technology, wordle
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Comment by Jeff Carter on September 1, 2008 at 12:25pm -
Ok this is pretty cool too....I found an online text of another thinker, Thomas Hobbes, and loaded the entire book Leviathan --500+ pages-- and plugged it all into Wordle. I can't wait to see what happens when we compare the two word clouds of the two guys who developed the basic philosophical foundations for our government.
title="Wordle: Thomas Hobbes Leviathan">src="http://wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/155601/Thomas_Hobbes_Leviathan"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd">
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Comment by Andrea Snapp on September 1, 2008 at 3:58pm - Oh - what a great new insight to compare/contrast, not to mention...analyze! Woo-hoo Jeff!
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Comment by Luke McCoy on September 1, 2008 at 3:59pm - What a deep engagement activity Jeff. I was surprised at some of the words that were used little. I'm wondering if some of the speeches given by our presidential hopefuls would mirror either one of these...
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Comment by Sean Nash on September 1, 2008 at 8:38pm -
yep- love it.
at a coaching meeting on friday, kris larson and i took the transcript of obama's acceptance speech and pasted into wordle. when we realized that he didn't say "applause" 1,000 times, we pasted the text into a MS Word document and used the "replace" text feature to cut our the "applause" in the transcript and replace it with a " ".
very cool stuff.
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Comment by Jeff Carter on September 1, 2008 at 10:53pm
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Alright for now I just creating a single place to access all of the word clouds I am creating. Check them out if you want, still interesting.
The Magna Carta
title="Wordle: Magna Carta">src="http://wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/156572/Magna_Carta"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd">
Jean Jaques Rousseau: Social Contract
title="Wordle: Jean Jaques Rousseau">src="http://wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/156579/Jean_Jaques_Rousseau"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd">
United States Constitution
title="Wordle: US Constitution">src="http://wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/156589/US_Constitution"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd">
Declaration of Independence
title="Wordle: Declaration of Independence">src="http://wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/156595/Declaration_of_Independence"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd">
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Comment by Jeff Carter on September 2, 2008 at 9:53am
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Barack Obama's Convention Speech
title="Wordle: Barack Obama">
src="http://wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/157321/Barack_Obama"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd">
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Comment by Tori Grable on September 3, 2008 at 8:24pm - Wow. Quite impressed. Feel like I've missed out, as this is the first I've heard of wordle. Plan to explore it more right now myself. Seems very powerful in my discipline as we talk about word choice and words' connotations. Tremendous technology!
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Comment by Jeff Carter on September 8, 2008 at 7:29am
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John McCain Convention Speech
title="Wordle: John McCain">
src="http://wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/170936/John_McCain"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd">
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Comment by Bob Nash on September 10, 2008 at 3:14pm - quite interesting. After looking at the two candidates' word clouds, it is quite evident in my opinion who is using divisive rhetoric and who isn't
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Comment by Sean Nash on October 27, 2008 at 1:17pm
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WOW.
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