Many of us are familiar with Wordle, a site that allows you to create a word cloud from text that is typed or pasted into a text box. However, there are a few other sites that also allow you to create word clouds:
ABC-Ya: ABC-Ya is a word cloud creator designed for elementary students. The interface is easy to use and it offers options for customizations.
Tagxedo: Tagxedo allows you to create a word cloud in a particular shape. The downside of Tagxedo is that it requires the installation of Silverlight software.
Tag Crowd: Tag Crowd is similar to Wordle, but doesn’t give you the option to choose colors, fonts, etc. What I like about Tag Crowd is that itallows you to choose the number of words you want displayed. It also allows you to set the minimum frequency the word has to appear in the document to show up in the cloud. It also gives you the option to show the number of times the word actually shows up in the document. You can also enter a stoplist of words that Tag Crowd ignores when creating the cloud. Depending on how word clouds are used in the classroom, these extra features might make Tag Crowd a more powerful learning tool than Wordle.
Word it Out: Word it Out is very similar to Wordle, allowing options for customization of the word cloud.
Wordclouds.com: Wordclouds.com offers a lot of flexibility and creativity when creating word clouds: different shapes, colors, fonts, word spacing, etc. Word clouds.com can be used on a Chromebook, tablet or phone.
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