Fun With Word Clouds

Everyone loves word clouds, even if they don't know it. A couple of semesters ago my professor showed the class a cool tool, Wordle, to convert text into a visual, a.k.a. - a word cloud. All you have to do is copy text into the box, and poof, out comes this little picture that you can customize with various, fonts, colors, and shapes. To ilustrate, I copied my resume text to create the Worldle image in this post.

Wordle gives more prominence to words that are mentioned more frequently, so can help to illustrate trends. This little trick has proven useful for several projects. I created a Wordle using open-ended survey responses to visually display the results in a presentation. I also made a Valentine for my boyfriend and used our first few months of email corresponce, cut it into a heart shape, and pasted it onto red construction paper.

The possibilities are endless. Thumbs up for Wordle!