I acknowledge that I’m easily sidetracked when something catches my eye. Sunday afternoon, I’m sitting here in my purple and white Vikings jersey watching the Vikes take it to the Cardinals. I’ve got a Twitter search for #Vikings and #Cardinals running along side my regular Twitter feed. Twitter provides great fan reaction from both sides of the game as it happens.
In the midst of this, I look over to my stream and I see a tweet from @NoelineL asking “what do you see in the mirror”. Next commercial, I followed her link and it took me to a word cloud devoted to Margaret Atwood. Very interesting. As I looked at it, I could see that this was very interesting. I like any type of visualization. The title says that she “cares about” and then displays the word cloud. I like what I see and so the next step is to lie down on the couch and have it analyse me.
Done, and done. The results generate the cloud along with embed code to put into a blog, wiki, website, etc. My cloud appears below.
What do you think, blog reader? Is this me? Is this what I care about?
As I’m pondering that, I think about a comment that @tk1ng had laid on me once about the division of the online personality versus the real personality. It’s worth another look through that lens.
I’m also trying to think of a use for it beyond the curiosity factor. You know you’re going to want to create one for yourself but is there another use?
Since the message implies that the word cloud shows what I care about, I’m thinking about the tweeting classroom. If the students are tweeting their learning, expressing their concerns, their interests, wouldn’t that make for a great word cloud to put on the class website or wiki? I would think it would be a very nice visual for parents and students.
You log in via your Twitter account and you can claim your own personal URL. Just remember that you’ve given the site access to your Twitter account. You’ll probably want to revote it after you’re done just to keep your account secure.
The content of this blog is generated by whatever strikes my fancy at any given point. It might be computers, weather, political, or something else in nature. I experiment and comment a lot on things so don't take anything here too seriously; I might change my mind a day later but what you read is my thought and opinion at the time I wrote it! My formal education includes a Bachelor of Mathematics degree from the University of Waterloo and a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of Toronto. Ontario Ministry of Education and Training qualifications are in Data Processing, Computer Science, Accounting, and Mathematics. My personal website is at: http://www.dougpeterson.ca Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dougpete I'm bookmarking things at: http://www.delicious.com/dougpete
