WordClouds.com....Fun & Unique Word Cloud Choices!

I love word clouds. 

Word clouds are perfect to use in so many ways within education, the library, professionally and for personal use too. 

Not only do I love using word clouds for my personal and professional life in presentations, blog posts, letters and more, there are lots of ways to use word clouds within education too. 

They can be used for highlighting the key terms or content of a book or chapter; when brainstorming with a large or small group of students; as an assessment tool; for note taking with an entire class or group of students; to study spelling and vocabulary words; as a timeline tool or to highlight special and historical events; to gather and share self and peer reflections; and so much more.  

Last week while working on a new post, One Word Can Change The World! What Is Your #OneWord For 2018, I wanted to create a word cloud as I brainstormed all of the words to describe the library and our profession as Future Ready Librarians.  

I was excited to come across a new word cloud tool called WordClouds.com that you will find here.  

WordClouds.com is very simple and fun to use.  Let me show you how.  

First, just log into WordClouds.com. 

You will see all of the different functions of WordClouds.com at the top. 

First, click on Word List.  

Once in Word List, you will click on Paste/Type.  

This is where you can easily type or paste in the text that you want to create your word cloud from. 

A little advice I have for you.....Once you type out your list, copy the list because you never know when you might run into a snag or something unfortunate happens that makes you have to start again. It is pretty frustrating...especially to students in the middle of working on a project. 

Once your word cloud is created, you can select from a variety of themes, colors, formats, fonts, sizes and more. 

One of my favorite features is being able to pick a Shape that you'd like for your word cloud. 

 I picked an apple,

 heart, and....

even turned my word cloud into a Colorful Shape.  

You can find Letters and upload your own image to create into a word cloud too. 

 Once you have your word cloud created, colors and backgrounds can be changed, as well as...

 lots of different themes and...

 fonts. 

You can also change the direction of words, size and how much the word list includes. 

Once you have your word cloud created and it is ready to share and use, you will find a few choices under the drop down menu on the left hand side.  This is where you can also print your word cloud. 

As you can see, WordClouds.com is an amazing and exciting word cloud tool for everyone in your library, school and community.  I can't wait to see how you use it in 2018 too!