Lianne Fisher

 

Number of people involved:

10-20

 

Amount of time scheduled for the activity:

½ hour to construct the Wordle.  Need to wait for students to complete.  Can be done in seminar and/or online out of class.

 

Program/Class the plan was used for:

Seminar or Grad Class

 

Example of Procedure:

Please view Todd Rose’ TedTalk:  On the Myth of Average (or a weekly reading).

 

When you watch the talk please write down the main themes and ideas that come to mind, you might use some of Todd’s words, you might use theories or phrases discussed in the course.

 

If you use a 2-3 word phrase, please use hyphens (e.g., please-use-hyphens).  Please attempt to generate more than 10 words/ideas and do your best not to evaluate and judge the ideas, if the word/theory/theorists or idea pops into mind, jot it down.

 

Please use all lower case and if you hyphenate an author/theorist with an idea, please put the idea first and the author second (e.g., brainstorm-seelig).    I am modifying the work of Tina Seelig (2012) on brainstorming for this activity (the book is called–inGenius:  A crash course on creativity).

 

Once you have all your ideas, please put them into the forums, nothing else just your words with a space in between, once everyone has a chance to post I will take them and put them back together again for the whole group.  Please, do your best not to read each others’ brainstorm list before you do this activity.  Thank you.

 

Example of activity:

Take the non-hypenated words/phrases and put in a Wordle.

 

Now take the hyphenated word/phrases and put in a Wordle.

 

You will how have two different images (based on the frequency of words).

 

Connections to the literature:

Demonstrates ways in which our language, how we talk about things, treats relations as objects (e.g., Packer, 2010).

It also allows the instructor to see the main ideas the students are identifying in the course material.

 

Ways in which the plan addresses democratization or justice:

Provides a demonstration how when we do not talk about or acknowledge the relationships between ideas/concepts, we tend to turn these ideas into things.

 

Variations

You can use it for lectures, readings, anything really.

 

How to build the activity in SAKAI

The original list of words are in the forums and they are copied and pasted into the Wordle.  It would be great if there was a Wordle generator. If not it is easy to do.

 

Other technology needed for the plan

Access to the Internet.

 

References

Packer, M. (2010).  Educational research as a reflexive science of constitution.  National Study of Education, 109(1), 17-33.

 

Seelig, T. (2012).  inGenuis: A crash course on creativity. New York, NY: Harper Collins.