This document discusses three free online word cloud creation sites: Wordle, ABCYA, and Tagxedo. Wordle allows users to input text and generate a word cloud where the frequency of words is represented by font size. Tagxedo also generates word clouds but allows users to choose different shapes instead of just clouds. The document provides instructions on how to use the features of each site to create, customize, save and share word clouds.

1. Word Clouds
By Ora Baumgarten
March 7th, 2013

2. Word Clouds
There are three main free sites for
creating word clouds:
Wordle – http://www.wordle.net
ABCYA - http://www.abcya.com/word_clouds.htm
and
Tagxedo – http://www.tagxedo.com

3. Wordle
http://www.wordle.net
Create word clouds from text that you
provide. It gives prominence to words
that appear most frequently. You can
save, print and share your creation.

4. Example of Wordle

5. or

6. or

7. or

8. Wordle is useful for…..
• bulletin boards
• brainstorming or reflecting
• remembering vocabulary
• studying for an exam
• summarizing a chat or discussion
• adding an image to a blog post
• sharing thoughts or notes
• creating greeting cards
• Showing creativity

9. Creative Writing
Write a poem about a country you visited:
 Lines 1 and 8: the name of the country
 Line 2: three physical features
 Line 3: main city, museum, landmark,
famous site
 Line 4: bordering countries or sea
 Line 5: climate
 Line 6: three historical events that shaped
the country
 Line 7: issues of importance; poverty, poor
land, war, pollution

10. South Africa
Warm, vibrant, subtropical
Table mountain, Cape Town, Kruger
Park
Indian Ocean Zimbabwe
Mild in the summer and winter
Boer War, Nelson Mandela imprisoned,
democracy
Poverty, rich fertile land
South Africa

11. What does it look like in
Wordle?
http://oraweb.wordpress.com/

12. How to use Wordle

13. Home Page
View other users' work for inspiration

14. How to Use Wordle
http://oraweb.wordpress.com/

15. Creating a Word Cloud
Write, or paste a paragraph of text in the word box.
Then select go and watch your cloud form.

16. Saving a Word Cloud
To save your Wordle:
1. Create your Wordle
2. Click the PrtScr button on your keyboard
1. Paste (Ctrl V) into a Word Document
2. Double click the image to crop and resize it
3. Save as .doc file
3. Or
1. Paste (Ctrl V) into a Paint or graphic editor
2. Crop and resize the image
3. Save as .jpg image

17. Customizing your Cloud

18. Personalizing your word cloud
Choose a layout for your
words.
Choose a colour scheme
for your Wordle.
Choose what language you want your Choose your word font
word cloud to appear in.

19. Wordle in any language!

20. Randomizing
By Selecting ‘Randomize’ you
are allowing Wordle to choose
the layout, colour, language
and font of your word cloud.
You may continuously choose
‘randomize’ until you find a
style that best suits you.

21. Word Count
Select ‘ language’ on your toolbar,
and then scroll down to ‘show word
counts’. This screen will then pop
up, and allow you to see the
number of times a word was used
in your cloud.

22. What to watch for!
Wordle will take out unnecessary words, such as connecting words(
ex. the, then, after etc.) However, Wordle will ot notice subtle
differences in the same word, and therefore treat that word as two
separate subjects (see below).

23. Gallery
Search
specific
View other subjects
people's work

24. Examples

25. Enter text or URL
http://oraweb.wordpress.com/

26. Control the number of words
http://oraweb.wordpress.com/

27. Using 20 words only

28. Decorate your bulletin board

29. What song is this?

30. Introduction activity
Get everyone to write their name into a Wordle.
Display the results on the interactive whiteboard.

31. Use Wordle to write "All About Me"
_________________________________________________

32. Make information look interesting

33. Text focus
What do you think the text will be about?

34. Classroom Rules and Norms

35. Ways to say things differently

36. Matching

37. Characters in a book

38. Birthday cards

39. Famous speech

40. Poetry

41. Idiom of the Day

42. Defining Skills using Wordle
Give your students a new vocabulary
word and ask them for associations. Put
them in Wordle

43. Using Wordle for Classroom Polls
Other ideas - birthday month, favorite animals,
hardest spelling word, feelings, food

44. Identifying Theme in Story

45. Character Traits Analysis
Write identifiable and important character traits for any character

46. Create a Custom Image Header

47. Spelling with Wordle
• Create and post your weekly spelling list using Wordle.

48. Give pupils a self-esteem boost & improve
relationships
• Write each child's name on a separate sheet of paper. Circulate each sheet around
the class so each pupil writes at least 1 nice/+ve attribute about every other pupil.
They can repeat words others have used. Collect the sheets, type each pupil's list of
attributes with their name x10 & Wordle the result.

49. Clarify values
• Brainstorm a list of personal values that the class feels are important to live by, or use
a checklist

50. Language News

51. Tagxedo
http://www.tagxedo.com
Tagxedo is a word cloud creation tool.
You can turn text, websites, blogs,
and more into designs based on the
frequency of words found in the
medium.

52. Tagxedo
Very similar to Wordle
Big difference: create different shapes

53. Getting started
Two ways to create

54. Creating & Changing
To add text

55. Creating & Changing
To Save, Print, Share

56. Creating & Changing
Respin - randomly change
Lock - don’t allow changes
Menu - manually change options
} To change the way it looks

57. Creating & Changing
To use a shape instead
of a “cloud”

58. Creating & Changing
Advanced options, not
used often

59. Advanced Options Vocabulary
Frequency Modifier - allows you to increase the number of times a word is used without
retyping the word
Normalize Frequency - Will make a list of unrepeated words look like a normal word cloud
Spread - how different do you want the biggest and smallest words to be? (preset at 40)

60. Printing/Saving/Sharing
Much easier than Wordle, although some options are complicated.

61. ABCYA.com – word clouds,
great for the younger students

62. Scroll down the page – add your
text and click on the arrow.

64. Don’t forget to save to your
computer

65. Click on Add
Content – then
Upload Images

66. Add Files, and Navigate your
way back to your saved files on
your computer

67. Add a Tag, click on Upload

68. Fill out the form – (Yes, it is a
lengthy process!)

69. Select the Image you are after –
double click and .. .. ..

70. Ta –da!
Don’t forget to save your work!