Wordle and Tagxedo

1. Wordle and Tagxedo By: Sharon Baxley and Nicole Dove

2. Examples • http://www.wordle.net/gallery • http://www.tagxedo.com/gallery.html

3. Wordle (http://www.wordle.net) • A free tool that creates word clouds from text provided by the user. • Text can be from an original source, or from a URL. • Generates word clouds and gives greater prominence to words that appear most frequently. • Can change font, color and layout. • Can save by taking a screenshot, printing out, or save to a public library.

4. How to use Wordle • Personal narratives: Write, or copy and paste, a personal narrative into Wordle. Students will be able to see what is important to their peers from the words that are produced from the Wordle word clouds. Compare the words that are used most often by boys, or girls, by age group, or by class/grade level. These Wordle lessons make great displays outside a classroom.

5. How to use Wordle • Famous Speeches Enter the text of a famous historical speech into Wordle. Analyze the results by looking at the most commonly used words, or even the words that are not used. What does this tell us about the orator and their intentions? Go to http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/previous.htm orhttp://www.americanrhetoric.com/top100speechesall.html for a list of historical speeches you may want to get started with.

6. How to use Wordle • Classroom Polls: Instead of your traditional bar graph or pictograph, try using Wordle to organize your data. What is the favorite activity in your class? Have all students take turns at entering their favorite activity in to Wordle and generate the resulting cloud. Bigger words = more popular activities. Can use after a test to see what was difficult and if there is a common theme, or what activities in class students would like to see utilized in class.

7. How to use Wordle • Compare and Contrast Use Wordle as a compare and contrast tool. Compare and contrast the word clouds of two or more students' writing, famous speeches, song lyrics, news reports, book reviews or whatever else you may need to compare in your classroom studies.

8. How to use Wordle • Current Affairs Analysis: Copy and paste a news story into Wordle. What could the story have been about? Can you guess what the headline would have been? Where could have it taken place? These questions and more make this a worthy discussion exercise.

9. How to use Wordle • Wordle Word Walls: Brighten up your word walls with this fun idea. Students can brainstorm synonyms, antonyms, or definitions for their list of vocabulary words. Add your word clouds to your existing word wall work to help stimulate those higher thinking skills in your students. Keep a tally of the targeted vocabulary words that the students use in speech on a daily basis, and add them to a Wordle cloud to show which are used most often.

10. How to use Wordle • Unit Review/Preview Posters: Students can create KWL charts on what they would like to learn and find out about a given topic. Alternatively, create word clouds at the end of a unit to summarize the key learning points or vocabulary from a given topic.

11. How to use Wordle • Historical Document Analysis: • Have you ever wondered what the Magna Carta or Declaration of Independence would look like when pasted into Wordle? Try it and see. There will be lots of talking points from the resulting word cloud. What do you predict you will see? What themes can you identify? How does the word cloud fit in with the historical context of the document?

12. Wordle • Wordle • www.wordle.net • Click on CREATE. • In the text box, paste the words you typed in your Word document. • To create the Wordle, click on GO. • The more times a word is typed in the text box, the bigger it will appear in the Wordle. For example, a word typed 5 times will be larger than a word typed once. • To keep words together, use a tilde (~). You can find the tilde in the top left of your keyboard. For example, if you want “George Washington” to stay together in the Wordle, you need to type George~Washington. • When the Wordle appears, you can change the font, the layout, and the colors. • To make your own colors: • Click on COLOR. • Click on EDIT CUSTOM PALETTE. • When you click on the squares of color, a rainbow color palette will appear. You can pick the four colors that you like. • If the computer you are using is connected to a color printer, you can print by using the PRINT button underneath the Wordle. If you are not connected to a color printer, your Wordle will be printed in black and white.

13. Tagxedo • Very similar to Wordle but enables users to manipulate and customize the shape and visual features of the cloud.

14. Tagxedo • Tagxedo • www.tagxedo.com • Click on CREATE. • In the left sidebar, click on LOAD. • In the box where it says ENTER TEXT, paste the words you typed in your Word document. • Click on Submit. • Close the text pop-up box by clicking on the X in the upper right corner. • To change the colors, click on the arrow next to THEME. • Scroll down to see all of your choices. • You can close the theme pop-up box by clicking on the X in the upper right corner. • You can change the font and orientation the same way you changed the colors. Click on the arrows next to those options. • Under OPTIONS, you can change the SHAPE. • Click on the arrow. • Scroll down to see all of the shape options. • Close the box by clicking on the X. • If you click on INVERT, then the shape is left empty, and the words fill in around the shape. • Near the top of the sidebar, under LOAD, you will find options to SAVE and PRINT your Tagxedo. • If you SAVE, make sure to save your Tagxedo as a JPG.