Friday, May 10, 2013

Tagxedo: An Even Better Word Cloud


This is a great site to make Word clouds with an added twist.  You can make the words themselves form shapes.  If you have ever used Wordle for this you know that the limitations were always that it made a rectangle shape image.  With Tagxedo the text itself can create a picture.  Below is this blog in the shape of a handprint. 





There are many uses for Tagxedo.  Any time you create a Wordle, you could use Tagxedo.  I used Wordle each time I made student groups.  They would make one to illustrate what they have in common to create a cohesive group.  I also had students copy any Google Document they were working on just before they claimed they were done.  They would look to see if words like “very”, “good”, “then” and so on were used too much.  The larger the word, the nore often it was in the writing.  This helped students to identify repetitive words and use Word Choice better.   Below is my class policies handout in the form of the Gull Lake logo.
  


Tagxedo can be used any time you might have normally used Wordle or a word cloud.

Visit Tagxedo to get started:  http://www.tagxedo.com