A reader requested that I look a Tagxedo in comparison to Tagul (which I reviewed last week). I will say that when I first went to the Tagxedo site (and downloaded a Silverlight update), I was prepared to anoint it the champion. On first glance, Tagxedo is lovely.
Good Things about Tagxedo:
- The interface is fantastic-it's extremely easy to use.
- Want custom? Tagxedo is for you. You can customize almost everything. I especially like that your word cloud can be in a shape you upload. My cloud (below) is in the shape of my avatar. That's pretty awesome.
- I like that they have many preset themes to choose from-sometimes I just don't want to put my own color scheme together.
- Generally, Tagxedo is fantastic if you want to make a word cloud for you, or for your classroom wall-I could see it as a great option for a Word Wall. I mean it clearly beats down Wordle.
However, the winner of this match goes to Tagul. I like Tagxedo's interface better and I also like that you don't have to log in. But, Tagxedo is in Beta testing (which I don't mind), but certain features are being spirited to a "Pro Account" in the future, which stinks. Also, there isn't an option to copy the HTML code to embed it into fine websites like this blog. But more importantly, I especially like Tagul because the words in the cloud are links. It's interactive, it can take your students somewhere. I think that is the really innovative part of Tagul. Not only is it interesting/pretty/exciting to look at, but if I have laissez-faire as a word on my review cloud and some of my students haven't a clue about what it is, they can click it and find out. It's pretty learning, which I'm all for.
So, thanks for inspiring this post, Anonymous 4.11.2010, 2.03 PM-I hope this review helps you.
No comments:
Post a Comment