Week 2 - Word Clouds

Created by Jessica Meier (2013).  Library.  www.wordle.net

Did you find yourself asking what a word cloud is?  Don't worry, I did too.  When I saw it, it clicked that I had seen them before.  I thought they were pretty cool, but I had no idea how to make one.

The word cloud above was created at www.wordle.net.    I added some words about the library (this is by no means and exhaustive list) and pressed go.  This cool thing came up.  I could change the color and the font and the shape, but I thought this one was pretty cool.   Wordle was very easy to use.  The text box was blank.  I filled in the words and...voila.   

There is another website for making word clouds.  It is www.tagxedo.com.  I found this one a little more confusing to use.  You can search by a number of different suggestions (News, Twitter Handle for example). I searched in the NEWS search box using Oklahoma tornadoes.  A bunch of words in a shape came up.  I was able to change the font, shape, color, etc, but I was not able to type in the words I wanted.  I typed in my personal blog's URL and a pretty cool word cloud came up about my running adventures.

Word clouds could be a great way to assess learning.  Students could type in all of the buzz words on the topic of the day (either in the box or on a class or library blog) and then make a word cloud.  The teacher or librarian could use the word cloud to get a glimpse of what the students remembered and found important.

Word clouds are pretty cool!  Glad that I know how to make them now!!