How did I forget about this? Thank goodness Jessica Johnson reminded me about running my blog site through a word cloud in her 2014 Blog Review post! Here's what she had to say:
"As I review/reflect on 2014 I also enjoy running my blog site through Wordle to create a word cloud that makes the words used more often larger than the other less-used words. I got the idea from Tia Henriksen in this post to use it as a way to reflect on what you are blogging about to make sure you are focusing on what is most important to you."
I used Word It Out to create my word cloud because at home I only use a Chromebook and Wordle doesn't work on it. (Keep this in mind if you have Chromebooks at school-- it's a great tool for kids as well!) Here is a post by Kim Mattina with other Chromebook friendly word cloud generators.
Looking at my word cloud, school is a big one, no surprise there! I also love that students, teachers, books, and time figure prominently. In 2015 I'm going to work hard to make writing, learning, and families be more present in my blog.
As a teacher, I find it especially inspiring to read a blog written by an excited principal. Thank you for taking the time to share your thinking here. I have used word clouds to have students analyze their journals' word choices, noticing if they are using a variety of words, what kind of words they use, or over use. Word cloud also gave students a sense of what they tend to write about. One student's word cloud had the word "lunch" featured in huge letters, and it turned out that in every journal entry he focused on what was for lunch at school that day! Thank you for blogging. I keep meaning to get my blog going, but in the meanwhile I am enjoying reading blogs from others, like you!
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