2009 seemed to be the year when word clouds became mainstream. They can be used across many areas of life, and teachers have found dozens of ways to use them creatively. I know that students love using them, particulary when they enter the URL of their blog and check what they have been focussing on in their writing. I do the same from time to time. You can read about it from a 9 yr old boy here.
This one below comes from a site introduced to me by @achurches on Twitter and seems like a nice change from Worldle. Word it Out does not have as many features yet (it says more are coming) but I find that Wordle is blocked in some of the schools I work in, so this might be worth checking out for that reason alone. I do wonder though if 'Wordle it' has become the verb for word clouds in the same way Google hijacked the search engine?
This one below comes from a site introduced to me by @achurches on Twitter and seems like a nice change from Worldle. Word it Out does not have as many features yet (it says more are coming) but I find that Wordle is blocked in some of the schools I work in, so this might be worth checking out for that reason alone. I do wonder though if 'Wordle it' has become the verb for word clouds in the same way Google hijacked the search engine?
Tagul is another useful option http://tagul.com/
ReplyDeleteThis word cloud generator adds Google searches to each of the words in the cloud. Potentially could be very useful, but flipside when using with kids is that it could potentially deliver some risky search findings. Worth exploring IMHO