Thursday May 31, 2007 Tag cloud generator
This is the neatest tool I've seen in awhile. TagCrowd.com is a web-based tag cloud generator. You paste in your text (or upload a text file), choose the numbers of terms in the text you want to visualize, select any stop words you'd like to skip over, then click a button to create your tag cloud on-the-fly.
Here's an example using the text of all Blern posts to date:
around blended blern chat classroom commons creating definition delta example facebook faculty free google groups however http information instructional instructors interesting itap learning mapping mind ncsu net online open participants people professors program recently represents resources social space students teaching technology term think timeline tool university vista web wikipedia work
created at TagCrowd.com
Posted by jmwill16
( May 31 2007, 11:36:57 AM EDT )
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This is really cool! It took me a few tries to figure out that it works best if you have a lot of text. That makes sense though...since it's looking for frequencies of word usage.
I wonder what it would be like to put a syllabus through the system? Or maybe a learning module for a course. That might be a interesting intro to a learning module. Very, very cool.
Posted by kim duckett on May 31, 2007 at 11:32 AM EDT #
Yeah, I thought this kind of display really lends itself to introducing a topic or product. You're right that the tool becomes richer when there is more text. Libraries staff have already played with this a little bit using the text from faculty publications, and also the combined posts on the Learning Commons discussion board to date. I'd like to see clouds generated in real-time, using the terms people are using to search our online catalog.
Posted by Joe on May 31, 2007 at 11:48 AM EDT #
Very neat indeed, I could see this being put to use on a discussion forum. It would give people an idea of what is being talked about very quickly, without having to gloss over a hundred postings. Very Web 2.0ish too!
Posted by Charlie on May 31, 2007 at 12:10 PM EDT #