Do you have students who are too nervous about participating in a group discussion or see a dense text and immediately decide not to try and work through it? Word clouds are a great tool to involve quiet or struggling learners whilst making learning objectives more accessible for all types of students! Word clouds help identify common themes in text and poll for the most common words. Here are 29 free word cloud resources for you to check out!
1. The Teacher’s Corner
The Teacher’s Corner provides a free word cloud maker that will give your students more opportunities to be creative. A unique feature is that you can paste text and choose common words to remove from the final product. Then, your students can choose a layout that’s appropriate to the project at hand.
Learn More: The Teacher’s Corner
2. Acadly
Acadly is compatible with Zoom and is a great generator for promoting student collaboration! It can spark your students’ prior knowledge before a lesson or test their understanding by getting them to work on identifying ideas after a lesson.
Learn More: Acadly
3. Aha Slides
The best feature of this word cloud generator is that it can be used live. Aha Slides is a great resource to spark participation and encourage interaction while prompting your pupils to identify important words in a conversation.
Learn More: Aha Slides
4. Answer Garden
This tool is effective when brainstorming ideas for a project! The more people that add thoughts, the better. When a word appears more frequently from responders, it appears bigger in the final project. Therefore, it’s a quick and easy way to poll your class for the best, and most common, ideas!
Learn More: Answer Garden
5. Tagxedo
This website allows your learners to get creative with their final product. Users can paste in a large text and then choose a picture to format it into so that it’s best represented. What a great way for students to present their findings to you and their classmates in a visual format!
Learn More: Tagxedo
6. Word Art
Word Art is a tool that will 100% leave your students feeling proud of their final product! Give your kiddos a project with purpose by instructing them to create a word cloud in a creative format that they can then purchase and display in their personal space at the end!
Learn More: Word Art
7. Word it Out
This website is great for an end-of-unit knowledge check while also sparking your learners’ interest in graphic design. Personalizing their project is something to work towards- prompting learners to work productively to finish their piece in time to customize it.
Learn More: Word it Out
8. ABCya.com
ABCya is a straightforward cloud generator with easy-to-navigate options that are great for elementary-aged learners. Your kiddos will find it easy to use to paste a large text into and then identify the most important words in a passage. Then, they can get creative with font colors, style, and the layout of the words.
Learn More: ABCya
9. Jason Davies
This simple tool will help your learners quickly transform text into a customizable format to display the most important words. Beyond this, the simplicity of the generator will help them easily identify the main idea of a text by picking out the common threads.
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10. Presenter Media
Very helpful for visual learners, this tool pairs word clouds with relevant pictures such as plants, countries, animals, and holidays. ESL learners would greatly benefit by pairing the most important words with an image.
Learn More: Presenter Media
11. Vizzlo
Another free resource to enhance a text and identify keywords is Vizzlo. It provides plenty of examples of famous speeches that have been boiled down to magnify keywords and phrases that are specific to the content. This will aid your students when completing projects on specific topics.
Learn More: Vizzlo
12. Google Workspace Marketplace
This easy-to-use app can be added to your students’ Google Workspace. With little support, they’ll then be able to independently use it to summarize and identify the big idea of a dense article before reading!
Learn More: Google Workspace Marketplace
13. Word Sift
This is a great tool for upper grades who are dealing with more complex texts. A unique feature in Wordsift allows your students to click on unknown words and be transported directly to a thesaurus, dictionary, images, and example sentences. They can then color code and categorize words to aid in vocabulary recognition.
Learn More: Word Sift
14. Venngage
Free to sign up and use, Venngage can be used with upper-grade students to prompt them to engage with the typical word cloud features and more design options. Better yet- Venngage can also be used in a professional sense; giving your learners applicable skills for real-world jobs.
Learn More: Venngage
15. Visual Thesaurus
This “vocab grabber” specifically focuses on finding the most important vocabulary words from a pasted text. It provides definitions and examples of the identified words and generates a customizable list that’s perfect for helping your students dissect longer and more complicated texts!
Learn More: Visual Thesaurus
16. EdWordle
EdWordle is an online word cloud generator that allows users to create and edit word clouds based on the game Wordle. Word cloud users can create by picking fonts, color themes, and word patterns. You can even access word clouds made by other people to get a better idea of how it works!
Learn More: EdWordle
17. Simple Word Cloud Creator
This tool allows you and your students to create personalized word clouds. They can be bright and cheerful, or dark and gloomy.
Learn More: Simple Word Cloud
18. ImageChef Word Mosaic Creator
Put together word cloud mosaics using this program. You can have fun with the various shapes and symbols that aren’t typically seen in other word cloud programs. Simply save your final image and share it with your students on any online platform.
Learn More: Make Use Of
19. Tag Crowd
Thanks to its basic design, Tag Crowd is a great tool for beginners. Simply enter the words you want to use into the box and pick your favorite colors, font, and style. Word clouds can then be formatted, printed, and posted around the classroom to remind your students of important information.
Learn More: Tag Crowd
20. MakeWordArt
MakeWordArt is a user-friendly tool that allows you to put together your own basic word cloud images using art. You can pick which word art style you like the best, enter your text, and create your own personal word collage to share with your kiddos.
Learn More: MakeWordArt
21. Booogle Word Cloud
Booogle Word Cloud allows you to make your own word cloud activity using Google Drive. It uses various file types (such as PNG files) and lets you make edits based on font and color palette preferences. What a fun way to express yourself and captivate your kiddos using engaging word clouds!
Learn More: Booogle Word Cloud
22. Pro Word Cloud App
Pro Word Cloud is a Microsoft add-in that is used with PowerPoint. I love this tool because you can create your word cloud and paste it right into your slide deck. Your students can even use this program to create their own word clouds.
Learn More: The PowerPoint Blog
23. Word Salad
Word Salad is a popular app that you can use to curate word clouds. Personalize the output by making use of the various different to change the overall look of the final image. Play around with font sizes to make some words stand out among the others.
24. Word It Out
This online tool allows you to craft word clouds that you can transfer onto other items. You can even pick your own custom color scheme. Show your appreciation to your students and colleagues by creating thoughtful gifts and designing wrapping paper out of your word cloud creations.
Learn More: Word It Out
25. Power Slides
Power Slides make it easy to put together your own word cloud collage. All you have to do is decide on which words you want to include, type them in, and generate your word cloud. This is the perfect generator for your students to use as well.
Learn More: Power Slides
26. Canva Word Cloud Creation Tool
Did you know that educators can sign up for a free Canva Pro account? All you need is to sign up with your school or organization’s e-mail address. Canva offers several graphic design tool options, including the ability to create beautiful word clouds and so much more.
Learn More: The Branded Bucks
27. Infogram
Infogram offers over 37 interactive chart types, including word clouds, of course. Put together 10 free projects with animations and engaging customized features. Projects can even be published online using the free account.
Learn More: Infogram
28. Vevox
Vevox is an interactive tool that can be used in distance learning programs. This generator allows students to collaborate in real time and results in the formation of a community word cloud. Whether your students are in the same room or not, they can still participate and join in on the fun.
Learn More: Vevox
29. WordPress
You may be familiar with WordPress if you’ve created a classroom website. However, you don’t have to be a professional at web development to put together a word cloud. This informational video is a great place to start if you are interested in creating a WordPress word cloud.
Learn More: YouTube
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