You Are Your Words, created by the American Heritage Dictionary, is a neat web application that allows users to create a self-portrait utilizing words that tell who you are—those that make you, you! How cool is that?

The fun begins when a photo is uploaded to the You Are Your Words site. At this point, users can copy and paste a passage of text that is already written—or there is an option to link to Facebook or Twitter to grab relevant content. Users can also customize fonts and colors before creating a pretty nifty final product. After the word cloud image is generated, it can be downloaded for further usage and/or shared on a variety of social networking sites.

The picture below is an example of a You Are Your Words image I created with the text from this post!

For best performance, use You Are Your Words with one of the following Internet browsers: Firefox, Google Chrome or Safari.

Classroom Connection:

The possibilities are endless with You Are Your Words! For starters, this “cool tool” could be utilized as a unique icebreaker activity at the beginning of a new school year or semester. What a fun way for you and your students to get to know one another!

Besides completing an autobiography activity, creating a mini-biography using You Are Your Words is also an option. Upload the image of a famous person, historical figure, hero or person of interest and then include quotes, passages, poems and/or a speech the individual gave as text to create the word cloud. This idea could also apply to characters in a novel, short story, play or poem as well as an author study related to one of these literary forms.

Regardless of the way in which you choose to incorporate You Are Your Words into your classroom, the finished products can be used to create visually appealing cover pages for reports, research papers and/or presentations. The word clouds could also transform any bulletin board into artwork your students, parents and colleagues will surely admire!