Happy Tuesday!
This week's T4 piggybacks on last week's tip: word clouds.
I found Tagxedo quite by accident. Tagxedo is very similar to Wordle in that you can create word clouds using the free, online program. However, the most powerful difference between Tagxedo and Wordle is that Tagxedo allows you to create magnificent shapes with your world cloud.
I don't just mean circles and squares, I mean graphic images. For example, open this image: "I'll Have Another"
Here is the 'static' image. You can see that this word cloud is created from an original image of the horse and jockey.
Of course, this is a bit of an advanced word cloud. You can also do something a bit more simple, such as the image I created for the cover of our WGST videos last year. I asked ll the fourth graders to share 10-15 words you think of when you think of WGST.
Here is where Tagxedo rocks. I was able to not just make a word cloud, but I was able to put it into a shape I wanted. I simply added the text/shape I wanted and then pasted in the text. Rather than just have the words fill the letters WGST, I had it do the inverse so that the negative space is actually the letters WGST.
The power of Tagxedo is that you can make word clouds out of anything from blogs, tweets, websites, and on and on.
Here is a video of how to make a Tagxedo.
If you, like me, find this awkwardly exciting, you can learn much more at this link. Where the creator of Tagxedo explains 101 ways to use this magnificent tool!
Thanks!
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