My Head is in The Clouds!

Last week I wrote about Wordle a favorite word cloud generator of mine.  Jen over at Runde's Room left me a comment about her favorite word cloud generator--Tagxedo pronounced [tag-SEE-doh] similar to "Tuxedo." I am in word cloud heaven.  Tagxedo allows you to make word clouds into shapes.  You can copy text, type in your own, or just enter the URL of a web page.  For example, here is a coffee-cup shaped word cloud of my blog:

The really neat thing about Tagxedo is that you have the option to include punctuation or numbers.  Here is my About blog post without numbers or punctuation!

The possibilities for Tagxedo are endless, but I know that my number one use will be to take the rather wordy emails that my principal loves to send and turn them into a fun word cloud.  I can't wait!  Of course, there are boundless educational uses for Tagxedo, but for now I keep thinking of the shapes and the people who would love them.

 How about a Tagxedo for the bus driver?

Or the music teacher?

In addition to the standard shapes there is an entire gallery of shapes preloaded with words.  Why is this exciting?  When you click it opens up in the creation window and you can paste in your own text and choose your own colors!

I need a monkey, ladybug and smiley face shape for a few of our staff members with those themes for their rooms.  Oh, and wouldn't a book be great? 

Tagxedo is the brain-child of Hardy Leung. The current beta version allows you to create your own shapes. (Warning:  It appears, to this elementary teacher, to be way more math and computer coding than I am willing to know/learn...I'm thrilled to leave it to the experts.  Thanks, Hardy!) Want to know more?  Check out this FAQ from Tagxedo.

Hardy has several fantastic blogs spotlighting, you guessed it, amazing word clouds. 

I encourage you to take a peek and start exploring.  I apologize to your family in advance for the delay in breakfast, lunch or dinner.   

All Things Tagxedo--The Official Blog of Tagxedo, Tag Cloud with Styles

 Daily Tagxedo--Current Events, Trending Topics, or Whimsical Idea of the Day

Celebrity Tagxedo--Celebrities+Words+Images=Celebrity Tagxedo

What Tagxedo will you create today?