There isn’t much to Wordle it just does what it does very well and that is create word clouds from text that you input. If you have never experienced a word cloud then you are missing out, the more often a word shows up in a chunk of text the larger it appears in the cloud (see the example below). There is no signup required although it helps with a few things. You have a fair amount of control over the word cloud by being able to change the font, layout, colour and all the usual visual treatments.

So how can this benefit education?

• Create a visual of by pasting the text from a chapter of a book/text/article and easily represent the words that show up most in the book.
• Get your students to create word clouds (a word of caution on this use as the gallery is not moderated so it is possible for students to browse and find unsuitable word clouds and images so a word to the wise).
• Put word clouds into your course as often as you can to spice it up and show the content of the the course section at a glance.

That’s all I got so help me out and give me some ideas of great ways to use this free service.