creating a word cloud (ced 575)

Creating a Word Cloud

W O R D L E I S A T O Y F O R G E N E R A T I N G “ W O R D C L O U D S ” F R O M T E X T T H A T Y O U P R O V I D E . T H E

C L O U D S G I V E G R E A T E R P R O M I N E N C E T O W O R D S T H A T A P P E A R M O R E F R E Q U E N T L Y I N T H E S O U R C E

T E X T . Y O U C A N T W E A K Y O U R C L O U D S W I T H D I F F E R E N T F O N T S , L A Y O U T S , A N D C O L O R S C H E M E S . T H E I M A G E S Y O U C R E A T E W I T H

W O R D L E A R E Y O U R S T O U S E H O W E V E R Y O U L I K E . Y O U C A N P R I N T T H E M O U T , O R S A V E T H E M T O T H E

W O R D L E G A L L E R Y T O S H A R E W I T H Y O U R F R I E N D S . ( S O U R C E : W O R D L E W E B S I T E )

What is Wordle?

How I use Word Clouds in the classroom

Word Clouds are great fun for all age

groups and class settings! I use them

as an introductory activity at the

beginning of each semester by having

students use their name as the main

focal point of the "word cloud" and then

insert words that describe themselves

(ex) hair and eye color, personality

traits, and any feature they may want to

include such as, favorite foods,

hobbies, music.....anything that will help

the class, and myself, get to know them

better. Then we print them out to

display on our wall outside the entrance

to the classroom.

Word Clouds can be saved to "the

gallery" and retrieved later, but they

can sometimes be hard to find,

especially if you forget what you

saved it as. That's why I have my

students do a "print screen" and

paste into paint, then save the image

as a JPEG file. That way students

can save them to their student folder

to retrieve whenever they want. I will

show you these steps in the following

slides.

Saving a Word Cloud as a JPEG FILE

Select CREATE to start your Wordle – Select GALLERY to view examples - Select ADVANCED to try more features

Insert text here

Helpful Hints

Key single words (phrases will separate)

Enter sentences

Copy and paste text, paragraphs or stories

Learning the Wordle Screen

~Learning the Wordle Tools~

Randomize – By selecting the randomize

tool, it will automatically choose the color, font, and layout. The down side to this is that your style is gone once you click “randomize” again. Unfortunately, the back button feature doesn’t apply here. So if you find one you like, save it to the gallery.

Font – Layout – Color – These

options on the toolbar allow you to select the style you like. Again, each time you make a change you usually can’t get back to the same layout.

Once you have chosen the desired Wordle style, arrange the Wordle screen to have the “word cloud” area showing. Press the “control” and “print screen” keys

at the same time. Next, open Paint and select “edit” and “paste”.

Print Screen – Pasting to Paint – Saving as JPEG

Next, use the “select” tool to cut out the area of the “word cloud” that you would like to save as your JPEG image.

Print Screen – Pasting to Paint – Saving as JPEG

Recap

Open wordle.net

Select create

Enter text

Change to desired style & colors

Save to Gallery (if desired)

Print Screen and copy into Paint

Cut out desired area

Save as JPEG

After you have selected the area, use the “right click” feature on the mouse and select “cut”. Then open up a new Paint File and paste.

Finally, you are ready to save your “word cloud” as an image. To do this, select FILE Save as change File Type to JPEG.

You Tube Video Tutorial

Finished Word Cloud

With added Picture Style Frame and Picture Border Color

Other Word Cloud Resources

You Tube Video You Tube Video

You Tube Video