Wednesday Web - Wordle

This is the start of a new series of Wenesday posts which I'll be using to show you some fun things which are free on the wonderful web. Since my day job is supporting the use of  IT to enhance learning in primary schools this will be a good way for me to pass on things I use in my work.

This week the subject is 'Wordle'. You can use this free online tool to transform text into beautiful displays in an instant! The example above was a description of patchwork and quilting for beginners on Quilter's Cloth.

I copied the text then went to Wordle and pasted it into the box. Click 'Go'and hey presto your words displayed in a fun colourful graphic! You can change the font and colours seperately or just click on 'Randomize' to see different combinations. Here's another using this same text:

You can also type a blog address into Wordle and see a display of the frequently used words on the blog. This is a really interesting way of seeing what you've blogged about recently. Here's mine:

Now you need another little free program to quickly save the image for your blog - a screen capture tool. You could use the Printscreen button on your keyboard but then you would have to crop the image - too fiddley!! There are lots of free screen grabbers out there but the one I use is 'Screenhunter'. This is so easy. Once it's installed, just launch the tool, then every time you want to grab a portion of your screen press F6 on the keyboard, drag a rectangle around the image you want and Screenhunter saves the jpeg in 'My Pictures'.

Now I've told you about 2 cool freebies so that's a bonus one for starters! Please let me know if you try it or use it in your blog and tune in next week for more free fun from the web.

PS I was browsing through the gallery on Wordle and came across this - just right for today: 'Lest We Forget'