Word Clouds

This week, I was introduced to the art of crafting word clouds. The one above was created with wordart.com and represents myself and the things I believe to be most important to me. The font is titled "Mountains of Christmas." It stuck out to me visually because I enjoy the way it looks, but my favorite holiday is also Christmas, so it really fits into the "all about me" word cloud I was creating! It's even depicted in my favorite colors, which reveals even more about me. I enjoyed playing with the shapes that can be created for the word clouds, but ultimately wanted my cloud to be readable, so I left it in its original shape. Word clouds definitely have educational value. According to Garr Reynolds (2021), "Projected slides should be as visual as possible and support our point quickly, efficiently and powerfully." Word clouds are a good way to accomplish this goal. They're visually appealing and offer the presenter a chance to keep the audience's interest while they verbally present the information introduced in the word cloud. Reynolds (2021) says, "but the best PowerPoint slides will be virtually meaningless without the narration (that is you)." Word clouds fall right into this category. An audience may be able to take meaning from parts of it, but it doesn't give away the speaker's full intent ahead of time. This would be especially interesting as a presentation tool for educators. I could imagine using this to introduce new topics or display poll results in my middle school classroom.

References:

Reynolds, G. (2021). Presentation Zen Design Tips. Garr Reynolds. Retrieved September 16, 2022, from https://www.garrreynolds.com/design-tips