Sunday, August 9, 2009

Visual words


I have just stumbled across a great tool for the classroom, an online thesaurus and dictionary, Visuwords.

Okay sounds pretty boring, however this is a sound resource that aligns with Oliver's framework as it adds visual elements with colour coding and lots of detail, for those that wish to delve more deeply, to a dictionary/ thesaurus. Picture this on anOHP or even an interactive whiteboard....type in your chosen word and it pops onto the screen, then related words pop into position around your chosen word with links, the different colours and style of lines signify things such as a verb, a noun, an adjective, a derivative and so on. When you hover over a bubble the meaning of the word appears. You can also drag the image around the screen and it flows as if 3D and you can zoom in or out to see the big picture or intimate detail.

This tool would be great in creative writing or language to show links between words and the many relationships in our language. This tool may help visual learners to see how it all goes together and it certainly has a constructivist theme as you watch the web being built! Typing in constructivist as my word however yielded little return.

I urge you to have a go, go on, pick a word...

4 comments:

  1. Wow Kylie,this is a great tool. Have you considered an ideal grade leve! this would suit? Would you use it as a word wall? theasaurus? for your creative writing tasks.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Laura, this tool I feel would be great for year 8 and 9 as their vocab is growing, although when exploring a new idea or topic, a play on this site could get some ideas flowing, for higher year levels as well, to generate class discussion and brainstorming too.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Kylie,
    This is superduper. I know exactly where I would use it right now... My daughter writes and stories are her thing. She sometimes gets stuck for the "right word", this not only would give her a better repetoire of words, but it will be fun for her to look them up. This way also I figure she would remember them, as it is very visual and exciting. Another tool for her to know and use in her 'technology trunk'. She is in grade 8, so it fits right in with where you are saying it would work! I also see it working for younger children as well, my other daughter in grade 3. Thanks for sharing.
    regards
    Jo-Anne

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Jo-anne,

    That's great! I hope your daughter has fun with it.
    If kids today don't want to look up books, they sure can find all they need on the net.

    Sincerely,
    Kylie

    ReplyDelete