Word Clouds

Word clouds (also known as tag clouds) seem to be popping up everywhere in education, but I think they are fun for personal use too. On websites for creating word clouds, you can paste in the address of a website or an article online and find the central theme of the page. You can also upload a paper like one you would write for English class and see the theme of the paper using a word cloud. Or you can make a list of your own words and create your own word cloud to use on your personal website, social media account or as a creative nametag or sign.

Wordle is the original word cloud website.  It has features to change the color themes, the font, and the text orientation on the cloud.

Tagxedo is like Wordle on steroids.  It has all of the same features as Wordle but also allows you to change the shape of the cloud.  If you are a Twitter user, you can create a word cloud based on all of your tweets.  You can even try other Twitter user names to get a feel for what they post.  Tagxedo makes this easy.  Navigate to the web site and click the Twitter box and enter the desired user name.  One of Demi Moore's followers on Twitter made a word cloud for her using the program.

I have found other word cloud sites, but I believe these are the best.  If you know of others, let me know!  Have fun visualizing your words in a new way!

http://www.wordle.net/
http://www.tagxedo.com/