Word Clouds

Word clouds are web 2.0 technologies that have been around for a long time. Most people tend to use the program Wordle, which in itself is a very good program. You can use this program to take any text and convert it into a word cloud. This cloud makes the most used words in the text larger and the least used words smaller. You can use this to your advantage as a teacher during discussion, activities, and lectures. You simply have to take any text relating to the classroom material, copy it into the website, and then wait as it loads the word cloud. Project the final product onto a screen or wall or print out the picture and use it to guide lessons. A program that I like even better than Wordle that does the same and more is Tagxedo. This program makes word clouds and adds in a ton of extra customization options. You can turn your word cloud into a picture, change the colors, change the arrangement, and even adjust how each of the individual words react to a click. It is a fantastic tool! Following is the link to Tagxedo: Tagxedo. The example word cloud in this post was created by Tagxedo using the words you just read!