On the Tagxedo Bandwagon

I hate to run away from Wordle because I love Wordle, but Tagxedo offers better options for individualizing a word cloud. Then, when using as a project to discuss character, setting, or any of the other literary elements we're asked to discuss, students can also justify why they chose a specific shape for their word. Tagxedo also offers the ability to customize the shape of the cloud.

In playing with the app I took a paper from my RDG 617: Media Literacy class on how the show Boondocks examines stereotypes within the African-American community, uploaded it and a outlined picture of the main character, Huey Freeman. This is what was created, which I think is pretty neat.

Another nice aspect of Tagxedo is that on my slow computer at home, the app runs quickly. I don't have to spend as much time waiting for a render as I do with Wordle. Tagxedo is also set up so word clouds can be saved. If I wanted to save a Wordle, I saved it to the public gallery to come back to later, or I opened it on my Mac, selected "Print" and then clicked the PDF button.

The kicker will be this: will Tagxedo work at school when Wordle doesn't? (It was unblocked but the computers in my classroom are a little out of date.

The End of Wordle as We Know It?

There's some trouble in paradise. I saw a number of tweets yesterday discussing alternatives to Wordle, but I didn't think much of it. Apparently, Wordle is in some trademark trouble, as there is already a trademark for "wordle" by a photographer in California.

A number of people have said that they don't want to see Wordle change names. Here's my thought, though--what difference does it make what it's called? Call it Wordle, call it WordCloud, who cares? As long as the service is available. And between social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, the number of users that could end up back at this site is fairly high.

Now, I'm sure I'm over-simplifying. I'm certain the legal issues are more complex than this. But a rose by any other name...

Books I Read in 2009

I made a Wordle for the list of books I read in 2009. I don't think I've forgotten many, but I think there are a few from over the summer that I left out. This is an exercise that I have done with my students before, where the larger the size of the item in the wordle, the more important it is in the story. In the case of my wordle here, the larger the text, the more I enjoyed it. What I found out after I made the collage is that I read so many books, that the difference between the sizes is smaller than I thought it would be.

If you want to see it bigger and the little finger thing isn't working--it didn't work on mine--click here.