Link: www.visuwords.com
Quick overview: The Visuwords website is a unique twist on a dictionary or thesaurus. Students look up a word and immediately see color coded “pop-up” connections to adjectives, antonyms, related words, definitions – all at once! Surprisingly intuitive and easy to use. Works well with an Interactive Whiteboard.
How can this be used in the classroom: If you’re teaching in an individualized classroom, you could leave this website running on your Interactive Whiteboard while your students are working on reading or writing assignments. If a student is unfamiliar with a word, they can walk over to the board themselves to look up certain words. Roll your mouse (or finger) over any of the “bubbles” to get a more detailed definition of the words. Double-click the “bubbles” to bring up more word connections. Last but not least, this tool could be used with the whole class when discussing new vocabulary. (Source: Candace Hackett Shively, ISTE 2011 Philadelphia)
