Multimedia Project - Tagxedo: Reflection

When scrolling through the list of potential technology I could do my presentation on, the description of Tagxedo that read “creating a word cloud in a shape” really caught my eye. It reminded me of when I was in middle school and was tasked to create a word cloud for a poem in my English class. However, the teacher did not instruct us to use any type of online resource that would enable us to quickly format our text into the shape we desired, and I was unaware that anything like that existed. Instead, I had to format my word cloud manually, using only the space bar to position lines of text where I wanted them to go. And if that sounds like it was incredibly frustrating, it was. That’s why when I realized what Tagxedo did, I knew I had to do my presentation on it. It really made a connection with me in terms of realizing how useful technology can be in the classroom. Word clouds have almost become a staple in English classes, but I wanted to show that they could also be used to great effect in other content areas such as science. In addition to helping students develop their vocabulary, generating word clouds also helps promote their creativity and express themselves in a subject area that students might not typically associate with creativity or self-expression.