I’ve always found word clouds to be a fascinating way to orient and think about key ideas and concepts. For example, the recent debt ceiling ‘negotiations’ resulted in this word cloud of the way Americans perceived the behavior of Congress.
I think “ridiculous” is about right.
If you’d like to make your own word cloud, you can use Wordle‘s software and tweak it along the way– with different fonts, colors, layouts– you name it. The only downside– you can’t exactly ‘save’ the image to your computer. You can post it to a public gallery and link to it that way. I thought I’d try it out with a short introduction I’ve written for a script that will be published in October. It was nice to see that Wordle and I see my work the ‘same way.’
For even more options, check out this blog post for teachers. Have fun making your own word clouds, now!
