One spin around the web for every week of the school year
by Jennifer Binford
This week: Cloud Formations
I know. I’m combining weeks. It’s cheating. But we took a brief family excursion to Washington, D.C. (more on that in a minute), so I gotta catch up. But this should count for two weeks, because it’s just that fun.
My friend Heidi turned me onto Wordle, a fascinating little app that converts text to word “clouds.” Words that you use more often in the text have a higher profile in the cloud, so you get a sense of which themes and concepts are most prominent. Wordle was developed by a software engineer at IBM, and he keeps a blog to keep aficionados up to date. The site also has a gallery; you don’t have to upload and share your Wordle, but you might find it fun to check out how other people are using it. (Be forewarned that some Wordles in the gallery are for adult eyes only.)
Back to Washington, D.C. My second grader kept a travel diary of our few days there, and I decided to type in the journal text to see what Wordle would come up with. Here’s the result:
I find this hilariously revealing. Clearly, the airplane made the biggest impression. I’m glad that museum made it in there somewhere. But the best part is a tall, succinct fun. Despite being made to pose for pictures at hundreds of landmarks and walking what he considered to be unacceptable distances, he apparently had fun. Yea!
I wanted to show you this Wordle in black and white so that it would be readable, but the site lets you choose all kinds of format options, from fonts and colors to the orientation of the words in the cloud. Lots of them are really beautiful.
In fact, I think I’m going to frame this one as a momento for him. It’s a great little snapshot of all his favorite spots, including the subway, the carousel on the Mall, and the Air and Space Museum. Oh, and the airplane. In case you missed it.
See you next link!
