Get your class creating shapely word clouds using Tagxedo

By Fiona Beal

What is a word cloud?

Tagxedo turns words -- famous speeches,

news articles, slogans and themes, even

your love letters -- into a visually stunning

word cloud, words individually sized

appropriately to highlight the frequencies of

occurrence within the body of text…

An example of a word cloud

Ask Google for Tagxedo.com

This

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Look around the Gallery for

inspiration

After looking around the Gallery for

ideas click on Create

The menu bar This is where you select all your options

Step 1: Load your words

You can write your own

words or import words

here.

Click on Submit when you are done

Step 2: Choose a theme

Themes are located

under respins on the

toolbar. There are

many themes to

choose from, select a

theme which matches

your subject and a

theme which you

enjoy.

Step 3: Now, choose a colour

Although a theme

designates which

colours are put into

your word cloud,

you can swap the

colours around to

show a particular

colour with a

particular size of

word.

Step 4: Select a font

Step 5: Select a shape for your

words

Choose a shape under the heading respings. Shapes can add meaning to the words which you entered into the word cloud. You can select an image from the list provided or you can add your own image.

Step 6: Select an orientation for the

words – any, horizontal, vertical or mix

Step 7: Save your word cloud

Select “Image 125KP JPG“ to save it on your computer. Title your image. Select "save". For later use, open up your documents and find the word cloud.

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Word cloud ideas

Icebreaker – All about me

Write poems and add poem to

Tagxedo

The Internet is full of ideas

This SchoolNet blogpost has many ideas http://schoolnetsa.blogspot.com/2014/01/try-creating-word-clouds-in-your.html

http://www.slideshare.net/lisavangemert/using-word-clouds-in-the-classroom

Thank you!