Continuing with my theme of completing “things” at the point of need I am excited to explore Thing 14:Media Skills as I am putting the finishing touches on our annual report.
I spent time with both Tagxedo and Wordle to create the “perfect” word cloud representing the various booktalks we did throughout the year. I quickly realized that there is a depth to these tools I was unaware of! In the end I found the advanced features of Wordle to be exactly what I needed for this project.
Here are some cool things I learned:
- Keep words together by using the ~ symbol
- You can add weight to words by giving them a point value
- To get numbers to show up in your Wordle open the font open the language menu option. It is a small checkbox at the very top.
- Using a spreadsheet adds a great deal of flexibility as you play with word sizes and color.
The spreadsheet I mentioned was a huge part of this learning curve and I wish I had thought of it sooner. In the end I had 3 columns.
The Combined Fields column is what I copied and pasted into the Wordle advanced box. The formula for that was =CONCATENATE(F3,”:”,G3)
The Wordle at the top of this post is the result of these fields.
Once again, a great learning activity. Just one caveat. GIVE YOURSELF A TIME LIMIT!!!!! You will never be 110% in love with your Wordle and will always wonder what just one more respin will bring 🙂
Nemeth's Teaching Toolkit 
Cool! How have I missed the advanced wordle tips all this time? Thank you!! Great image for your annual report!