Word Cloud Tools and Apps for Teachers

A word cloud is a visual representation of the frequencies of words in a text. Teachers can use word clouds for a variety of instructional purposes from creating class groups using students' names to reflecting on lesson plans, this article from 21st Century Educational Technology and Learning Blog outlines over a 100 creative ways you can use word clouds with students in class. Now that you have an idea of the educational and pedagogical potential of word clouds in class instruction, here are some of our favourite web tools an iPad apps we uncovered from our archive which you can utilize to easily generate and share word clouds. Check them out and share with us your feedback in our Facebook page.

Web Tools

1- Wordle

‘Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to your own desktop to use as you wish.’


2- Tagul

‘Tagul is an online word cloud generator that enables you to create amazing and unique word cloud art with ease. Professional quality results can be achieved in no time at all, even for users with no prior knowledge of graphic design. Best of all the service is completely free for personal use!’

3- WordItOut

WordItOut is a free word cloud generator that does not require a sign up. You can use it to create word clouds from sentences, entire documents or tables. You can also tweak the look of your word clouds by selecting a layout, applying different colours, adding  fonts and sizes. When you are done, you can share your finished product with others through an embed code or download and make a copy of it as an image file.

4- Tagxedo

‘Tagxedo turns words -- famous speeches, news articles, slogans and themes, even your love letters -- into a visually stunning word cloud, words individually sized appropriately to highlight the frequencies of occurrence within the body of text.’

5- Word Cloud Generator

This is a Google Docs add-on to use on your docs to ‘quickly assess what your emerging theme is, how to best categorize your document, or if it is someone's else's document - find out the theme of the document without reading it… Loads of new features including control over number of words, prettifying the cloud, dropping words and including a word count table in the document.’

iPad Apps

1- Wordsalad

Make great wordsalads out of documents that matter (or not) to you! With WordSalad you can make beautiful word clouds, super customized with different fonts, colors and words layouts.

2- CloudArt

Unleash your creativity by making beautiful word clouds on your iPad. Simply give Cloudart some text from a web page or paste some into the app and it will automatically create a gorgeous word cloud for you in seconds. Next, get busy with the intuitive sliders to customise your cloud to your heart's content. When you're happy with your masterpiece, share it with friends!

3- TagCloud ( Link no longer working)

Make beautiful tag clouds from your iPhone and iPad! Create a word cloud from a web page, custom text, your own spreadsheet file, or try sample clouds included with the app...

4- Word Collage

Create stunning word collages on your iPhone and iPad! Set up a collage with your text(or website URL), different layouts, fonts, and color themes.Simply start by clicking on the "Text" button. Add some text or input a website url. Select color theme and font in Settings. Select Landscape or Portrait orientation. Word Collage even lets you pan and zoom the picture.

5- Word Clouds by ABCya

'Word Clouds by ABCya.com is an easy-to-use app to create and share beautiful word clouds...Million of students have used ABCya.com's Word Cloud app online. Now it can be utilized on iPad.'

Originally posted here.