Tagxedo was an interesting site to demo how to use. It was a lot of fun sorting out through the different options. Its educational value however, is more indirect than direct.
As a word cloud program, it isn't particularly meant to directly teach anything, but as with most fun software online, there is almost alway a was to put an educational spin on it...
How do You Make it Educational?
A couple of thoughts initially come to mind:
First of all is posters/covers! Students can use Tagxedo to make a word cloud of their writing assignments, and then print these word clouds along with their respective assignments to use as cover pages. It's an interesting idea that allows students to include something a little more "fun" in their assignment in order to better personalize it. On a side note, a long as you check the paper and the cover for relevance, they can be an aid in ensuring that students aren't just directly copying work from each other.
Second, Tagxedo could be used as a way of broadening student vocabulary. When they make a word cloud of their paper, if the more frequently used words in it are words that don't necessarily make sense to be used so often, the student and their teacher can easily see this and work to help the student further develop their vocabulary. For example, if the first word you see is a huge, 72 point font version of "LIKE," then there may be some work ahead...
References:
Tagxedo. (2016, July 28). Retrieved from http://www.tagxedo.com/
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