Wordcloud + Puzzle Maker

Reading Janet Bianchini's lovely blog this afternoon, I learned about an interesting tool which lets you create interactive puzzles which can be embeddable on webpages or even shared in facebook and twitter. http://www.jigsawplanet.com/

Janet posted a puzzle of a wordcloud with internet words.
Janet, I have to tell you I tried hard but wasn't able to beat your time.

This is my wordcloud

And  below is the puzzle which I've just shared with my students in our EDMODO group. As the puzzle has a time counter, you can also use it on an IWB having different groups try to assemble the puzzle faster. In order to play, click on the SETTINGS icon below the image, click SCATTER and let's see how fast you can go.

To make the wordcloud I used http://www.abcya.com/word_clouds.htm
And to make the puzzle, I tried http://www.jigsawplanet.com/

Jing Pro + making a wordcloud background transparent

Learned two things this morning and wanted to share with Life Feast readers.

First, I watched a video made by Carla Arena where first she uses her webcam video to introduce what she's going to show and then shares her desktop. I already had Jing installed in my laptop , however, not the Pro version which allows you to record your webcam video and also publish it easily in Youtube. http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html

image originally from Shelly Terrell's blog

Second, while reading a post by Shelly Terrell , I learned you can add wordclouds to images and make the background transparent. Idecided to try it out. It took me some time to find the place where to click, for this reason I decided to make a tutorial showing it step by step. Another great tip she gave is to use ~ between words of the same sentence. Ex: in this image she has the question How~do~schools~involve~parents? http://www.wordle.net/ + Powerpoint



This is the tutorial I made.

A collection of TOOLS for EFL teachers (Part 2)

For this post, I'll be sharing sites with which you can create podcasts and different wordclouds.
It's always nice to know different alternatives for a tool you use a lot. Say, the tool you're planning to use is not working properly on the day you need it. Then it's time to look for similar tools.

 PODCASTING                

WORDCLOUDS  

                     

TAGXEDO - one more wordcloud device

I love WORDLE , ABCYA , and now am enjoying the possibilities of creating wordclouds with different shapes and also be able to save the image to my computer with TAGXEDO.

You can make a wordcloud out of a URL or a text, but then you have various editing options.
http://www.tagxedo.com/app.html

This is the word cloud I´ve created with my blog URL

This is the editing page.

Exploring Vocabulary Clouds

I had always liked word cloud generators for pre-reading tasks. With WORDSIFT you can get much more than that.

gwientjes in Youtube has made a great tutorial explaining how it works and giving wonderful ideas about how to use it in class.