A word cloud shows what a whole group thinks in a single picture. Everyone types a short answer on their phone, and the answers that come up most often appear big in the middle. Great for starting a lesson, a check-in at a meeting or a closing moment at a party. Here's how to make one in a few minutes.
How it works
- Create a quiz in Sparqel. You don't need an account yet.
- Add a question of the type Word cloud and type your question, for example "What's your favourite pizza?".
- Choose the time. The default is 30 seconds; it can't be shorter than 20, so everyone has time to type.
- Start the game on the big screen. Your audience goes to sparqel.com, types the PIN or scans the QR code and picks a name. You only create a free account when you play live.
Players type their answer on their phone, up to 20 characters. When the time is up, or everyone has answered, the cloud appears on the screen. The more often an answer was given, the bigger it gets.
You don't have to tidy anything up. Capitals, spaces and punctuation don't count, so "Margherita", "margherita!" and "MARGHERITA" become one word. The cloud shows the 60 most frequent answers.
Good questions for a word cloud
A word cloud works best when the answer is a single word. The shorter the answers, the more they overlap and the clearer the cloud. Just say so: "in one word".
A few ideas for different situations:
- In the classroom: "What do you already know about volcanoes?" at the start of a lesson, or "Which word from today will you remember?" at the end. More ideas in quizzes in the classroom.
- In a training or workshop: "What do you want to learn today?" You'll see straight away where the group stands.
- In a meeting: "How are you feeling today, in one word?" as a check-in, or "What's our biggest obstacle?" before you start on a plan.
- At a party: "Describe the birthday girl or boy in one word." Laughter guaranteed.
- Afterwards: "One word for today." An honest evaluation without a form.
Points, scores and more opinion questions
A word cloud gives no points and doesn't count towards the leaderboard. So you can happily put one in the middle of a regular quiz, as a breather between two rounds.
The word cloud is one of the opinion questions in Sparqel. If you'd rather have people choose from fixed options, use a Poll. For longer answers there's the Open question, and with a Scale or NPS scale you ask for a number. You'll find them all in the question types under Opinion.
In your presentation
Giving a presentation in PowerPoint or Canva? Run the game from your phone and put the big screen in your slides with a permanent viewer link. That way you don't have to switch between programs during your talk. Read how it works in live quiz in PowerPoint or Canva.
Afterwards
The report shows the most common answers and the list of all answers. You can also download everything as Excel, handy if you want to work through the answers later. Don't want a live session, but people answering in their own time? Set the quiz as an assignment with a deadline. The word cloud works there too.