Thing #2 - Wordle and Word Sift

Wordle and Word Sift both offer opportunities to create word clouds, with Word Sift having additional features, such as additional customization options and drag-and-drog images.

Either can be used as a literacy center, brainstorming center, history presentation or review, or comprehension center activity to summarize a reading passage. The content and the outcome are completely controlled by the educator.

Students can use either to create a personal narrative at the beginning of the school year, showing other students what's important to them. Students could also put important words from a topic of study (e.g. a novel, historical piece, science unit, etc.) into the generator and discuss the importance of these words in presentation format.

Although Wordle initially seems easier to use, I really like Word Sift's ability to to take images, make them draggable, take some vocabulary and drop it into a workspace which can then be captured and turned into a worksheet, a study guide or a power point.

A sample of a wordle to be used during a science lesson:
http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2255746/Separating_Mixtures

During my research of word cloud generators, I came across several other sites that have cool features some might favorable over Wordle and Word Sift. Those sites include ABC Ya, Tagul, Word It Out, Tag Crowd, Make Word Mosaic, and VocabGrabber.