First of all, I need to give credit where credit is due. I first learned of Wordle.net from this blog post. (Yes, it’s work-related, but also fun). Whereas Traci goes to great lengths to describe how Wordle can be used for educational purposes, I’m using it for my own vanity and amusement.
Wordle is a fun tool for making text clouds. The clouds represent the words used in any piece of writing–website, blog, poem, etc– so that the more often a word is used, the bigger the text. Below is the Wordle for this blog (I think it’s just pulling the first page of text)
Carichblogs home page
Things that suck
And, for fun, here’s the Wordle for this very post:
Wordle of Wordle post
As you can see, you can play around with the font, the colors, the layout, etc. You can even limit the number of words that show up on a Wordle (default is 150). It’s really interesting to see how often different words show up in your writing. I, for one, was a little embarrassed when I saw how often I used the word ‘like.’ It’s like I’m a valley girl or something!
The only downside is that you can’t easily save your Wordles. You can publish them to the public gallery and get the HTML code or you can create a screen shot, but you can’t just right-click and save.
Play around with it, anyway. I guarantee you’ll have fun and want to share your Wordles, too!
Ummm, I’d like to take issue with your assertion that somehow education and vanity/personal amusement are mutually exclusive. I think we both know that’s not necessarily the case…I could name names or situations, but I won’t. I’d also put myself forth as a sad example!
True, true… I just didn’t want anyone to expect anything of “substance” from my Wordles!
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This is super-duper cool. . . Thanks for sharing!