Tagxedo Critique - Artifact 1

Artifact pictured above.  Snowflakes are a type of fractal that is often discussed in mathematics.

Overview:
Tagxedo is a word cloud creating program that allows you to use websites or lists of words in order to create graphics for many uses.

likes:
Tagxedo is very easy to use.  Infact, if you google Tagxedo, you are able to immideately go to the sites create page and start creating word clouds.

Tagxedo is also easy to understand once you get to the website.  If you click "create" on the google page, you are immediately taken to the interface to create your word cloud.  The interface is very easy to manipulate in order to create your graphic.  Every time you change something in the interface, the graphic graphic updates in order to show an up-to-date word cloud.  During your manipulation, you can even upload your own pictures to use as the word cloud.

Dislikes:
Tagxedo has a shop to purchase products from the site which means to me that the creators of the tool are not necissarily 100% dedicated to the web 2.0 tool.  There are advertisements posted on home page which are a bit distracting.  If you want to have full use of the site, you should create an account and pay for some of the more intracate/advanced options.  During the creation of the word cloud, you can only paste words into text box, cannot type directly into the box.  While you can connect words with a ~, you cannot cluster certain words together.

Uses in the Classroom:
This tool is a great alternate way to show knowledge and can create a very interesting presentation piece - especially if a student takes the time to copy the most important words first in order to make them larger.  It can also assist students in organizing their thoughts during a presentation by discussing the smallest to largest words, or vica verca.

Overall:
This is not a large tool that would not make prominant in my classroom.  I would allow my students to use this tool to create a different way of presenting information, especially if they need a visual component to the project.