Another wordle alternative!

I was recently introduced to the benefits of Google Reader, thank you Belinda, and adding blogs that you follow to this account as a way of alerting yourself to new posts on the blogs you follow. It is very helpful because when I log into my gmail account and view Reader I can scroll through to read anything that I am interested in. While I was doing this today I noticed another potential alternative to www.wordle.net/ which I know many of my colleagues like to use as a mindmapping tool with their classes and which older children can use independently.

I have briefly explored www.tagxedo.com/ and created the mindmap at the foot of this post in 5 minutes. I started off thinking about words linked to literacy and then incorporated some ideas about integration of ICTs. I could have continued at length including more web 2.0 tools, however, this was just a test to see what tagxedo has to offer. The site does not require you to register, unlike word it out which I mentioned in a previous post, and it is very simple to use. There are lots of different coloured themes, like wordle, but you can choose the shape of the text so it appears in a hidden e.g heart shape. The font direction is also different and can be horizontal, vertical, h&v or any which way. When you are viewing the mindmap and hover over a vertical word it will zoom and spin to horizontal to make it easier to read. There are lots of fonts with the additional options of choosing 'all' or any '1', '2' or '3' fonts randomly.

When you are finished you can save the mindmap as an image to be uploaded to your online space or printed! There are 2 options JPEG or GIF and images can be saved as thumbnails or images with selective MPs.

Just added a tag for this in Delicious and 1322 others have tagged it so that's a good recommendation!