Wordle
Wordle is a free web site for easily creating beautiful word clouds from text, URLs, RSS feeds or del.icio.us account. They are a great way of visualizing the importance of a particular word in text since the more frequently a word is used the larger it appears in the Wordle.
I uploaded an image from Wordle. Here’s what I learned to do from the Edublogger:
Once you have created your Wordle you can save it to their Gallery and Wordle provides you the HTML code for embedding it into your blog post. Unfortunately this embeds a thumbnail image (170 pixels by 132 pixels) which is too small to clearly see the words. Dragging this thumbnail to increase size results in an image with blurred text.
One option: on a Mac captures images and save to desktop:
Command+Shift+3 – screencapture of your entire screen.
Command+Shift+4 – Drag the cursor out over the area you want to capture.
Now all you need to do is upload your screenshot and insert the “Full Size” (NOT “medium”) image into your blog post! The “Full Size” image provides the best quality image for viewing the text.
Option #2: Ttake a screenshot of your Wordle using Jing, SnagIT, MWSnap or Skitch (read this edublogger post to learn about screencapture tools).
I tried option one and was mostly successful. ou can see that I did not completely capture the image but I did manage to get the “dock” in the screen capture. Something to work on… Also, the Wordle should be animated.
