Comments on: beyond the tag cloud: the tagdex http://www.metablog.us/content/beyond-the-tag-cloud-the-tagdex/ blogging about blogging about Wed, 21 Jul 2010 03:59:59 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: michael brewster http://www.metablog.us/content/beyond-the-tag-cloud-the-tagdex/comment-page-1/#comment-42 michael brewster Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:48:13 +0000 http://www.metablog.us/?p=45#comment-42 Interesting idea here... I'm a teacher and writing consultant, and I've used "Most Important Word" (MIW) strategies in reading for years. With the advent of tag clouds, I have been able to have students see correlations between word frequency and their self-generated MIW lists. But I'm at the limit of innovation because while looking at the frequency of a word in a text is cool or a nice visual shorthand, it is missing that semantic meaning component. I'm interested in building a text tool that can map associations between ideas and words in a text but that acts like a tag cloud in its simplicity for display purposes on the web. The sort of stuff I see that acts in the associative way seems to be animated (Flash? Java?-driven) and doesn't translate well to the cut & paste nature of educational use. Invariably, I'm reduced to a screengrab which loses searching/text functionality besides linking. I can't be alone in seeing the potential for tagging relevancy that exceeds "frequency," can I? Who's doing useful work in this area? Interesting idea here… I’m a teacher and writing consultant, and I’ve used “Most Important Word” (MIW) strategies in reading for years. With the advent of tag clouds, I have been able to have students see correlations between word frequency and their self-generated MIW lists. But I’m at the limit of innovation because while looking at the frequency of a word in a text is cool or a nice visual shorthand, it is missing that semantic meaning component.

I’m interested in building a text tool that can map associations between ideas and words in a text but that acts like a tag cloud in its simplicity for display purposes on the web. The sort of stuff I see that acts in the associative way seems to be animated (Flash? Java?-driven) and doesn’t translate well to the cut & paste nature of educational use. Invariably, I’m reduced to a screengrab which loses searching/text functionality besides linking.

I can’t be alone in seeing the potential for tagging relevancy that exceeds “frequency,” can I? Who’s doing useful work in this area?

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