Word Clouds

While I was working at my desk this morning a teacher friend of mine came in concerned that Wordle would not work on her computer. She also was worried that Tagxedo wouldn't work either. So I started investigating. First we had a problem with the Java Plug-in, then one said they wanted Silverlight... (What is Silverlight btw?) Firefox wouldn't work, my trusty Chrome wouldn't work, I cringed as I opened Edge and it wouldn't work either. What to do?

She really wanted a way to get her struggling students that have had small group session after session, pull outs, and tutorials to have something fun to do. I figured, let's see what Google has for us. I searched "word clouds". Ding ding ding, we have a winner! Word Clouds, This this app is awesome!   https://www.wordclouds.com/

What does it do?

Word Clouds allows you to import a document, PDF, TXT file, a web page or you can past text into it. Then it will perform a word count and make the word cloud in the shape, font, color, and size you want. (Some limitations apply) Once created, you can save the image as a PNG, PDF, JPEG, SVG, share on Facebook, and even share it with word cloud. These make great images that your students have full rights to use on projects! 

While investigating different apps for this, I found this one to be best for my needs. I like where I can change the colors and their transparency, I can even import an image for the cloud to create. (I'll investigate this more!) It may not be as kid friendly as some other word cloud apps so I found two that are more kid friendly to  use: http://www.abcya.com/word_clouds.htm ABC-Ya is great for K - 4 kids, very little help from the teacher is needed to create with this one.  Word it out https://worditout.com/word-cloud/create is a little more complex so I'm thinking more 3rd to 6th grade. Granted, any age can use all of them. 

These are just three that I found, check out this post I found with more options.

https://elearningindustry.com/the-8-best-free-word-cloud-creation-tools-for-teachers 

Have fun creating and share some of your word clouds with me! I would love to see them!