Hey, tech gurus! It’s Tuesday, which means I’m back and ready to get this school year rolling with new segments of “Tech It Up Tuesday”, a series devoted to sharing an edtech tool, app, site or other resource that can be utilized in the classroom setting.

So, here’s the first feature of our 2015-16 adventure: Wordmark.it, a web utility that allows users to preview a word of their choice with the fonts installed on their computer.

OK, so if you’re like me, you might just have an addiction to fonts. I download them more than music from the iTunes Store, which is saying a lot of a lot. The only problem with all that is trying to remember the crazy font names as well as what each one looks like when you want to utilize one of them. No matter what the project, I sometimes spend more time browsing through my font list to find the perfect style of lettering as opposed to the content itself—sigh!

Well, thanks to Wordmark.it, gone are those days of wasting hours of your life trying to locate that one typeface. Yep, this nifty tool takes the guess work out of designing your next project—a classroom newsletter, directions for an activity, a presentation or even a new logo.

And it’s as simple as this: Access the site, type in a sample word or phrase, click the “load fonts” button and bang! You’ll get a preview that looks like the one shown below.

After the computer loads a preview of all fonts installed on your machine, you can click on those you like followed by the “filter selected” button at the top of the page to show a side by side comparison of your choices.

Other features include the “negative” option, which provides users with a glimpse of what the fonts look like in reverse—meaning white lettering with a black background. You can also select to view your fonts in different sizes as well. And lastly, if you need some advice from some of your font obsessed friends, you can also share and solicit feedback about your selected typefaces from others, save the list or even print a copy of it. Of course, you’ll need to register for an account if you want to resort to these drastic measures.

Classroom Connection:

You and your students can save time when creating documents, presentation and/or graphics by using Wordmark.it to preview exactly what your words will look like when using certain fonts.

In addition, art or graphic design teachers could even utilize this site to demonstrate design aspects of different fonts.

I personally think it’s pretty cool and useful to be able to view all of my fonts laid out in a grid-like format on one screen as opposed to messing around with a bunch of annoying drop-down menus to see what my projects might look like in print. OK, maybe it’s because I’m a font junkie.

If you’re not, be sure to check back later this week… I’ll have another tech gem waiting just for you!