Faith 2.0 Series

This post is a part of my new series called “FAITH 2.0” Today I will be discussing use of Word Clouds.

A few months ago I attended catechist ministry day and I chose to attend a workshop about Technology in the Classroom. The choices of the workshops were slim and I figured what do I have to lose. I went into the workshop with low expectations thinking the presenter would talk about PowerPoint and things I already knew. The presenter for the class was Sister Caroline Cerveny, SSJ-TOSF, D.Min aka The Technology Nun you can find her blog here.

Well kids that saying, “don’t judge a book by its cover” is SOOO true. I learned SOOO MUCH information from this class. The biggest lesson I learned was just because you don’t have the technology available to you (ex. Computers/projectors/TVs in your classrooms) doesn’t mean you cannot incorporate technology into your curriculum.

You might be wondering What are Word Clouds? Word Clouds are bubbles or “clouds” of commonly used phrases. We see these the most on blogs and other websites of commonly used phrases. There are 3 different websites to create Word Clouds. WORDLE, TAGXEDO, and ABCYA.

Since the New Roman Missal is fairly new I am going to use the old and new versions of the Gloria in my Word Cloud Examples. Here are the New and Old versions of the Gloria in normal form:

OLD TRANSLATION	NEW TRANSLATION
Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth. Lord God, heavenly King, almighty God and Father, we worship you, we give you thanks, we praise you for your glory. Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father, Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world: have mercy on us; you are seated at the right hand of the Father: receive our prayer. For you alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord, you alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father. Amen.	Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will. *We praise you, we bless you* *we adore you, we glorify you,* *we give you thanks for your great glory,* Lord God, heavenly King, *God, almighty Father.* Lord Jesus Christ, Only Begotten Son, Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us; you take away the sins of the world, receive our prayer; you are seated at the right hand of the Father, have mercy on us. For you alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord, you alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father. Amen

OLD TRANSLATION

NEW TRANSLATION

Glory to God in the highest,

and peace to his people on earth.

Lord God, heavenly King,

almighty God and Father,

we worship you, we give you thanks,

we praise you for your glory.

Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father,

Lord God, Lamb of God,

you take away the sin of the world:

have mercy on us;

you are seated at the right hand of the

Father: receive our prayer.

For you alone are the Holy One,

you alone are the Lord,

you alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ,

with the Holy Spirit,

in the glory of God the Father. Amen.

Glory to God in the highest,

and on earth peace to people of good will.

We praise you, we bless you

we adore you, we glorify you,

we give you thanks for your great glory,

Lord God, heavenly King,

God, almighty Father.

Lord Jesus Christ, Only Begotten Son,

Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father,

you take away the sins of the world,

have mercy on us;

you take away the sins of the world,

receive our prayer;

you are seated at the right hand of the Father,

have mercy on us.

For you alone are the Holy One,

you alone are the Lord,

you alone are the Most High,

Jesus Christ,

with the Holy Spirit,

in the glory of God the Father. Amen

As you can see the new version is a little bit longer. I have bolded the new/different parts.

For the first word cloud website, Wordle.net I am using the Old Version of the Gloria (this website also has the ability to put a website url to create a word cloud).

Tagxedo.com – like wordle.net tagxedo has the ability to put a website url into the site, however you can also put a twitter username into the program and they will give you a word cloud for the most used phrases. This site also has the ability to create t-shirts and other gifts from your word clouds (which I think is different).

Abcya.com – this site doesn’t have anything fancy but they do have children’s games for grades K – 5.

I think there is so much you can do with Word Clouds than just creating “pretty pictures.” One of the things we did with the First Communion students is we put all the words for the Our Father, Hail Mary, and Act of Contrition into one of the above websites and had the students unscramble the word clouds. This is a great way for them to learn their prayers without having them recite them to you.

Another thing you can do is use it for compare and contrast. The first word cloud was with the old version of the Gloria and the 2nd one is for the new version of the Gloria. By looking at the word clouds you can see that God, Lord and Father were common phrases in the old Gloria but in the new Gloria God and Father are common phrases but Lord is not since it isn’t as big. For more information on word clouds see how Sister Caroline used them here.

Have you ever used Word Clouds for anything? How did you use them? How else can we use them?