Word Clouds on the iPad

I love word clouds. It is the best way to deconstruct a piece of text with students. It lets you start that conversation about language, text types, literacy and the power of the written word. It is also a great way to do a text analysis. Marco Torres talks about using them to compare two political speeches to analyse the types of words each of the candidates use but this idea would work just as easily with characters in a book, types of poems or even a series of artists you are studying.

             TagCloud                                             CloudArt                                       WordSalad

There are not actually a lot of Cloud Word apps for the iPad but here are a couple worth investigating. The last two are technically not word cloud apps but are so good I thought I should include them. If you know of others please let me know in the comments and I will add them to the list.

TagCloud: $0.99 AU
Make tag clouds from your iPad! Create a word cloud from a web page, custom text. The app comes with more than 25 different styles of clouds, from plain black and white style to fun and colorful. Share your cloud with the world by exporting the cloud high-res image to your photo library, email or tweet.

https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/tagcloud/id540921415?mt=8


CloudArt: $0.99 AU
Make word clouds on your iPad. Simply give Cloudart some text from a web page or paste some into the app and it will automatically create a word cloud for you in seconds. Next, get busy with the intuitive sliders to customise your cloud to your heart's content. When you're happy with your masterpiece, share it.

https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/cloudart/id598345649?mt=8

Word Salad: FREE
Make wordsalads out of documents that matter to you! With WordSalad you can make beautiful word clouds, super customized with different fonts, colors and words layouts. Import any text with a single tap, then customize your salads with 8 great fonts with 8 great palettes as well as 5 layouts to position your words.

https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/wordsalad-your-salads/id545164778?mt=8

Visual Poetry: $1.99 AU
Visual Poetry lets you make text collages. Type your text and watch it instantly arranged as a mosaic in a variety of shapes and styles. Draw your own or use one of the 24 symbols included. Concrete Poetry is poetry in which the meaning is portrayed in a visual manner, easily taught using the Visual Poetry application.

https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/visual-poetry-word-collage/id364299857?mt=8

Word Collage: $0.99 AU
Create word collages on your iPad! Set up a collage with different layouts, fonts, and color themes. Simply start by clicking on the "Text" button. Add some text, select a colour theme and font and then select orientation. Word Collage even lets you pan / zoom. Save the collage to your photo library or send it by email

https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/word-collage/id527057508?mt=8


Phoetic: $0.99 AU
Create phoems with your own photos and text! A phoem is an image consisting of text only. Choose your own words, select your favorite photo, pick a font and color palette and turn them in a work of art. The result can be stored as a PNG, JPEG or even a PDF to allow for printing at extremely high resolutions.

https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/phoetic-amazing-photo-word/id546829744?mt=8

Type Drawing: $2.99 AU
TypeDrawing is an easy way for creating typography art and even unique watermarks on your photos. Type a sentence, then just draw with your finger. Voila! You've now got a one of a kind, unique and amazing typographic work of art. You can easily create poetic visual art with this fun and easy-to-use app.

https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/typedrawing-for-ipad/id372350676?mt=8

Wordfoto: $1.99 AU
You've probably heard the cliche about a picture being worth a thousand words. Wordfoto takes this phrase quite literally and created an app that turns photos and words into amazing typographic works of art. Eight unique Preset Styles with user definable custom styles with parameters for brightness, contrast, fonts, etc.

https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/wordfoto/id414002091?mt=8


As another resource for the classroom here is a fantastic article - 108 ways to use word clouds in the Classroom. Michael Gorman at 21st Century Educational Technology and Learning put his article together, make sure you visit his great site.