A Walk in the Clouds

I've been using word cloud-generators for a bit, like Wordle.  To make a word cloud, you copy and paste your text into a generator and it makes a shape (specific or free form) out of your words.  The more times the word appears, the larger it is.  So in that last sentence, the word the would be the largest because it appears the most (you can usually exclude words like the). 

I've recently come across a sweet new generator called Tagul.  It's pretty sweet because with Tagul, your clouds are clickable.  So, if you click on the words below, they take you to google searches (Click on the green techinteaching-on the upper right & it will take you to the google results for this site and the Twitter feed!).  But, you can change it so that it will take you somewhere else-just add the web address.  The style is totally customizable (shapes, fonts, colors, backgrounds, mouseovers, etc), and you can make your cloud from copy/pasted text as well as from a website.  I can see a lot of use in this.  Using it as a review would be great.  I plan to create one from all of the vocabulary words my students have learned this year and then post it to Blackboard.  If they don't know the words, they can click them for a definition.