I heardle we're using Wordle

While exploring the use of images and the proper use of attribution, we discussed the use of Wordle for creating word clouds. I decided to try my hand at it using popular classic titles of children's literature.


I found I wasn't wild about the platform because the image it generates isn't high resolution and the site itself isn't searchable. Yes, you heard me correctly, a Google hosted image site has no search capability.

From their help page:
"Wordle is a Google App Engine application. That means that the Wordle web site depends on the capabilities provided by the GAE platform for everything it can do, including saving and retrieving the Wordles you create, storing the thumbnail images, etc. Unfortunately—and surprisingly, considering the fact that it's Google we're talking about—GAE does not provide the capability to index and search for text in saved data."

Helpful user hint: If you're creating lists where there are spaces between some of the words (ex. Anne of Green Gables) that you want to treat as a single unit, you can use the tilde character (~) between words that go together. The tilde will be converted to a space when drawing the words, and the words will be treated as a single word.

Unfortunately, I didn't realize until after I'd typed my list that Wordle will treat each word typed as a separate unit. I created my document only to find that Where was located in a different place than the, Wild, Things, and Are. I hit backspace to return to the create page and discovered this leads you to the initial blank slate and not the words you'd provided. So, realizing I hadn't copied the text I entered, I set about re-typing all my titles into the box.