Some people have asked me to explain the tag clouds that appear on the Virtual Loft or the reference desk's del.icio.us account. So I thought I'd use a picture to explain!This is a cloud of the lyrics to "Hey Jude" by the Beatles. As you can see, it includes every word in the song. The more times the word appears in the lyrics, the bigger it appears in the cloud.
Tag clouds work the same way. They are used on blogs and websites as a visual representation of the themes discussed on the blog or site. For example, on the Virtual Loft (as with most blogs) each post is "tagged" with keywords describing the content of the post. The more posts that are given a particular tag, the bigger that tag appears in the cloud (because the blog is more "about" that theme). Similarly, in del.icio.us, useful websites we've found are "tagged" with keywords describing the content of the site or the reason it is useful. In order to see the list of sites that have been given a tag, just click on that tag.
We'll explore this idea more during Week 7 of Evanston Library Learns.
Check out this blog post for a cool idea for a game using musical tag clouds!
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2 comments:
Heather, the musical tag clouds are very fun. I got started trying to figure out the songs on the linked LibraryStream and Wordie websites, and, once again, time drifted away. It would have been cool if the music from the song started to play after 60 seconds or so. My kids are home from camp tomorrow, and I won't be able to twiddle away time trying to figure out songs!
To impress my boys, I'd like to do this with some of their favorite rap songs. (Although I can only imagine what the bold words would be!) I can't wait for week 7.
M
Hi Heather - I created a wordle. It's really cool. Can you tell me how to make it bigger on my blog? I tried to figure it out, and it seems I might have to upgrade to a custom CSS design package. Is that right? (I don't think I'm ready for that; I just want to increase font size.)
M
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