Word+Clouds

Thanks to [|Technololgy Bits, Bytes and Nibbles] blog post and the writer @cyndidannerkuhn who posted it on twitter, I came across a new player in the 'Word Cloud' arena [|Tagxedo]

There are a lot of choices with this Tag Cloud generator.



You have wide range of colours to choose from, interesting fonts (this example is called John Lennon).

Best of all, there is a variety of shapes or you can create your own word shape. There are huge opportunities for this feature to be used in education. The word shape could be This was a [|blog post] I wrote about [|Wordle] in June 2008, all activities can be completed in [|Tagxedo] This link [] are some of the sites I have found on Wordle or other Word clouds. This site ([|46 Interesting Ways to use Wordle in the classroom]) by Tom Barrett is a collaborative Google Doc that anybody can add to with their ideas of how they are using [|Wordle]. Like [|Wordle] you can save a jpeg or a png for printing out or inserting into blogs or wikis. But I'm looking forward to when you can embed an Interactive version called Tagxedo player like the example here on the [|Tagxedo site] (Scroll down to the last example to see the Word Cloud dance).
 * main theme or idea in book
 * main theme of a poem
 * the title of an essay/story
 * main idea of story
 * the focus of a science, history, social studies study

Here is a great slideshow [|101 ways to use Tagxedo] by Hardy Leung

ABCya And yet another Word Cloud [|ABCya], (as tweeted by @mdanonbaird) which is perfect for Juniors. make changes to the Word Cloud Click on Fonts to change the font || Colours to change the layout colours || and Layout to change the direction of the text! ||
 * [[image:http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_fAJ1_x5EGq8/S8ph2B0jDfI/AAAAAAAACKQ/5Q7vDtJI060/s200/2010-04-18_1324.png width="200" height="148" link="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_fAJ1_x5EGq8/S8ph2B0jDfI/AAAAAAAACKQ/5Q7vDtJI060/s1600/2010-04-18_1324.png"]] || [[image:http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fAJ1_x5EGq8/S8piKwRFLaI/AAAAAAAACKY/t1w8prrJ8-Y/s200/2010-04-18_1325.png width="200" height="152" link="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fAJ1_x5EGq8/S8piKwRFLaI/AAAAAAAACKY/t1w8prrJ8-Y/s1600/2010-04-18_1325.png"]] || [[image:http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fAJ1_x5EGq8/S8pi5Lkq_HI/AAAAAAAACKg/wdFsQXoidQM/s320/arrow.jpg link="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fAJ1_x5EGq8/S8pi5Lkq_HI/AAAAAAAACKg/wdFsQXoidQM/s1600/arrow.jpg"]] ||
 * Go to [|ABCya] || Paste in text || Click on the Arrow ||
 * [[image:http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_fAJ1_x5EGq8/S8pjX6uIzAI/AAAAAAAACKo/_lRlvbmDYdE/s200/font+menu.jpg width="200" height="176" link="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_fAJ1_x5EGq8/S8pjX6uIzAI/AAAAAAAACKo/_lRlvbmDYdE/s1600/font+menu.jpg"]] || [[image:http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fAJ1_x5EGq8/S8pjbYBRqTI/AAAAAAAACKw/gcREqsRLRG0/s200/colour+wheel.jpg width="196" height="200" link="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fAJ1_x5EGq8/S8pjbYBRqTI/AAAAAAAACKw/gcREqsRLRG0/s1600/colour+wheel.jpg"]] || [[image:http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fAJ1_x5EGq8/S8pje6spvgI/AAAAAAAACK4/uN6XTB24Z_4/s200/layout.jpg width="200" height="174" link="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fAJ1_x5EGq8/S8pje6spvgI/AAAAAAAACK4/uN6XTB24Z_4/s1600/layout.jpg"]] ||
 * Click on Randomize to

Click on Save to save to your computer or print out your Word Cloud.

Simple As!