Tagxedo

In an earlier blog Darcie had posted a blog about Wordle. I was looking into her Wordle and it looked creative and I wanted to comment on it. As I was commenting I saw that Prof. Judy had posted a comment to check out Tagxedo. My curious mind told me to check it out. Well to my surprise I liked it and had to try it. I wanted to see how to use it and how to integrate it in different ways.  I found this helpful google document:  101 ways to Use Tagxedo. Hope this helps you and you might want to check it out.
If you have a mac computer, it might be tricky at first. I just downloaded Google chrome and silverlight is not compatible with it. So I had to go back to safari after 20 minutes of trying to figure out why it wasn't working. I couldn't figure out how to embed the picture to make the words spin and pop out. However, I was able to save it as a jpeg and upload it onto here.
Here is what I created while using it:

I think this website would be great for students to use to describe themselves or other people (book characters, biographies, etc.), also a great use for vocabulary. The fun part of Tagxedo is that you can create a word cloud in different images, in Wordle you are not able to. However, Wordle was easier to use. I can see my students using Wordle better than Tagxedo, especially since they are in second grade. 

How would you use Tagxedo? If anyone finds out how to make it easier for Mac Computers please let me know! 

What do you like best Tagxedo or Wordle? Why?

NETs for Students: 1 and 2

NETs for Teachers: 1, 2 and 3

Wordle

Wordle is a website that I found looking at Darcie's blog. She gave great ideas of how we can use them in our classrooms. I would love to have my students create a Wordle using words to describe their mothers and fathers for our special events in May and June. These would be a great to gift to give to the parents. It was easy to use and I can see my students using it. Here is my example of my Wordle. I thought of words to describe my elementary students:

 

NETs for Students: 1 and 2

NETs for Teachers: 1, 2, and 3

Have you used Wordle in your classrooms? How?