Up 2 Notches: Good-bye Wordle, Hello Imagechef!

Have you ever meticulously planned a lesson only for it to spiral into chaos due to unforeseen circumstances?

This scenario unfolded for me recently during a lesson on Web 2.0 tools at the university. Eager to engage my class, I kicked off the session with a word cloud activity, prompting everyone to input as many words as they could about technology. However, to my dismay, upon visiting the site, my students were greeted with word clouds containing profanities on the homepage. It was a moment of shock and realization that I had little control over the content on Wordle, as it was dynamically updated in real-time by users worldwide.

Here's an example of what the homepage on wordle.net looked like:

Using Wordle for a lesson poses a challenge due to the lack of control over the content students may encounter on the site. The potential for inappropriate content makes it a risky choice for classroom use.

My excitement peaked when I stumbled upon Shelly Terrell's blog, "Teacher Reboot Camp," which offered insights into various word cloud tools. Terrell's comprehensive post provided valuable tips and tricks for utilizing 12 word cloud resources. Among my favorites are Word it Out, Tagul, and ImageChef.

Word it Out, similar to Wordle, offers additional features that afford more control over word cloud creation. Here's an example featuring my Delicious tags:

Word it Out proved to be a significant improvement over Wordle, offering easy image saving capabilities and more flexibility in manipulating words.

Next up is a word cloud created with Tagul. What sets this word cloud apart is its interactive feature: clicking on a word redirects you to a corresponding link. Here's an example of my Delicious tags transformed into a word cloud using Tagul:

Among the word cloud creators I've explored, my top pick is the one found at ImageChef. What sets it apart is the shapes feature, which offers a variety of options including people, stars, hearts, happy faces, and more. Using my Delicious tags, I created this word mosaic:

ImageChef Word Mosaic - ImageChef.com

I also crafted one for the Grade One blog that my students frequent daily.