Tagxedo

= = Created By: Tiffany Mason and Britton Sanders

Overview:
[|Tagxedo] is a word cloud program that is completely free. In Tagxedo, users can insert poems, lyrics, or other favorite phrases into a word box and create a word cloud. The element that separates Tagxedo and Wordle is in Tagxedo one can create word clouds in different shapes. Also, the Tagxedo word clouds are much easier to save than the word clouds in Wordle.

Steps to creating a Tagxedo word cloud:

 * 1) Go to tagxedo.com
 * 2) After entering the site, users may click on CREATE on the top right hand side of the site.
 * 3) On the CREATE page, users must first click on "Load". On this page, one can insert a website and/or text to insert into their word cloud.
 * 4) After loading the desired text, users can scan through the "Respin" categories to alter text, color, layout, and style.
 * 5) After choosing texts and styles, users can go to OPTIONS and chose "Shape". When clicking through the shapes, users can chose the shape that best fits their lyrics, poem, words ect.
 * 6) To alter text size, one must click on the "Word/Layout Options". Under this category, users can alter the tightness of the words, number of words used, and the frequency of words used.
 * 7) After the word cloud is completed, users can click on the "Save/Share/Print" category. Under this option, users may choose to save files under multiple sizes and file types.

**Hints:**

 * 1) The more words you have in your word cloud, the greater the definition of the shape.
 * 2) When uploading your own image, choose one with high levels of contrast. Too much shading or gray scale will create a cloud of indistinguishable shape.
 * 3) You may manually choose which words to include in your word cloud.
 * 4) Different fonts will also change the general appearance of the chosen shape.

**More advanced Tagxedo options:**

 * 1) If you want to import an image that more closely matches the theme of your word cloud, find an image (Google image searches are great for this), save it as a screen shot (jpg).
 * 2) Under the Shape tag, go to "Add Image" and upload the image from your computer.
 * 3) From here you can adjust the Threshold and the Blur. This may take some tinkering in order to attain the desired shape.

Uses in the Classroom:

 * 1) Great hook to introduce a new pieces of literature.
 * 2) Creative way to allow students to show off their favorite song/poem.
 * 3) A way to show the most frequently used/important words in a piece of literature or in a speech.

Artifacts:


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