Creating Word Clouds with Tagxedo
Tagxedo is a free site for creating word clouds. Users can take words from any source, including blogs, tweets, news articles, and turn them into appealing visual images.
Tagxedo's technology highlights and emphasizes how frequently words are used in the text. Tagxedo, unlike other word cloud generators, allows the clouds to be customized by color, shape, and designs. Additionally, this site allows you to exclude words from your cloud.
Give me an example.
One way I have used Tagxedo is to visually represent data from an informal survey I gave to my students. When trying to learn about my students' attitudes and feelings towards writing, I asked them to provide 3 words they associated with the word "writing." Their responses were placed into a spreadsheet, but unless I looked at every single column and response, I could not get a good feel for the general theme of their thoughts. With Tagexdo, I was able to copy and paste all of their words into the text box, and then the word cloud highlighted and emphasized the most common words used by my students. It was much simpler to determine if my students held positive or negative beliefs about writing in general by looking at the larger, bolder words. Below are two different variations of my students' responses about writing.
One way I have used Tagxedo is to visually represent data from an informal survey I gave to my students. When trying to learn about my students' attitudes and feelings towards writing, I asked them to provide 3 words they associated with the word "writing." Their responses were placed into a spreadsheet, but unless I looked at every single column and response, I could not get a good feel for the general theme of their thoughts. With Tagexdo, I was able to copy and paste all of their words into the text box, and then the word cloud highlighted and emphasized the most common words used by my students. It was much simpler to determine if my students held positive or negative beliefs about writing in general by looking at the larger, bolder words. Below are two different variations of my students' responses about writing.
Want more ideas?
One way students could use Tagexdo in class is to edit and revise their writing. Because Tagxedo emphasizes the most frequent words, this would be an excellent tool for having students examine their word choice. Students would easily be able to see what words or phrases they were overusing, and then return to their writing to replace redundant words with more creative choices.
Tagexdo could also be used when learning about main idea. Students who struggle with determining main idea or theme could create a word cloud from an article of piece of text they were assigned to read, and Tagxedo's cloud generator would show in bold the words and ideas presented most often in the literature. This could also be used as a final project after students have read a novel or set of related articles in which they demonstrate the main idea or themes they found while reading.
Lastly, students could use Tagxedo as an "About Me" tool at the beginning of the year. Because there are so many customizable options, students could create and post a word cloud that describes and visually represent their unique qualities and personalities. Rather than having presentation after presentation, students could post their individualized words clouds for others to examine and reflect on.
One way students could use Tagexdo in class is to edit and revise their writing. Because Tagxedo emphasizes the most frequent words, this would be an excellent tool for having students examine their word choice. Students would easily be able to see what words or phrases they were overusing, and then return to their writing to replace redundant words with more creative choices.
Tagexdo could also be used when learning about main idea. Students who struggle with determining main idea or theme could create a word cloud from an article of piece of text they were assigned to read, and Tagxedo's cloud generator would show in bold the words and ideas presented most often in the literature. This could also be used as a final project after students have read a novel or set of related articles in which they demonstrate the main idea or themes they found while reading.
Lastly, students could use Tagxedo as an "About Me" tool at the beginning of the year. Because there are so many customizable options, students could create and post a word cloud that describes and visually represent their unique qualities and personalities. Rather than having presentation after presentation, students could post their individualized words clouds for others to examine and reflect on.
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