What's more powerful than WORDLE or Tagul? What's able to access related images altogether on a single webpage?
Well, it's WordSift, an ELL resource, created by a research team at Stanford University. The image to the right is a representation of the WordSift of my blog post, Tuesday Trait: Voice
This web application was created to enhance student opportunity in learning English, yet WordSift can make a wonderful addition to any classroom, from kindergaten to college. This web application contains various tools you can use to more effectively teach lessons using the strategies discussed and explained in Classroom Instruction That Works: Research Based Instructional Strategies, written by Dr. Robert Marzano and his research team.
Try out WordSift! Only your imagination can limit your uses for this application.
When I first learned of ARPANET in science education groups, I wanted to be a part of these online interactions. When I participated in NSF programs, I began to use online interactions like email and forums. Over the past six years, I've moved on to the semantic web. I can't even imagine not having access to interactive applications such as Plurk.
I'm actively committed to include interactive web applications and networks in my professional development and teaching. Just as the Graphic User Interface, GUI, changed the way I "see" programs, the World Wide Web changed the way I interact in the World of Electrons.
At the core of all this online interaction is the ability to acquire a vast amount of information. What we do with that information, data, has been at the core of our quest to improve the interactive life. For that, we have data mining which is performed by various programs that have improved greatly over time. Data mining has been the impetus for the birth of the semantic web which has improved the way we visualize data.
Programs, sometimes called applets, turn a set of words (data) into lists or "clouds" that vary in size by the amount of time they appear in the set, like WORDLE. Other applets use lexical databases to create nodes based on the relationships among words, like VisuWords. Other programs or applets are tiny, yet powerful, like the new search capability of Plurk as it's presented through the new LIKE button.
The LIKE button is a way that anyone can mark and monitor a particular Plurk conversation by clicking on the LIKE button. While I've previously discussed the reasons why Plurk can be more effective for professional development or any other ongoing conversations on a particular topic than Twitter, I was a bit disappointed that there was no way to mark the Plurk Stream. Now there is. Use the LIKE button.
The LIKE button is very much like using a hashtag, only better. The main advantage is that you don't have to type a hashtag in every time you tweet on a topic. In Plurk, all you have to do is click on the LIKE button to put a particular conversation in a special collection that you can check to find out if the conversation has continued. You can also use the LIKE button to find the Plurk when you want to access the conversation for any other reason. The LIKE button is a magnificent data mining tool.
Those of us who use Plurk as the main source of our professional development know how great it is. If you aren't using Plurk, what's stopping you? Join me!
Have you ever had to search for a definition, antonym, or synonym while you are working online? If you have, consider using VisuWords to quickly search in your browser navigation toolbar. This online web application will speed your research, so you can quickly return to the task at hand.
The most effective way to use VisuWords is to add its search engine tool to your Firefox browser. All you have to do is click the link on the VisuWords website that says "search tool" and it places the VisuWords search engine on your Firefox Navigation ToolBar. Yes, it's that easy.
VisuWords is an excellent example of a web application, or applet, that draws its information from metadata sources also located on the World Wide Web. I believe this application represents what Sir Tim Berners-Lee described as he imagined the semantic web, part of the natural progression within the World Wide Web.
This particular application, VisuWords, works by analyzing clusters of words based on specific algorithms that derive what the VisuWord developer, Paul Dunn, calls "synsets": sets of synonyms. The term "synset" was coined by the Princeton research group who developed the lexical database named WordNet that is the source database for VisuWords.
Some of the "synsets" that support VisuWords relate to the grammatical connections of the search target, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. Other associated "synsets" are also derived and presented in the resulting graphic organizer of the word you select in your VisuWord search.
The source code for VisuWords is available for download. so the applet could be a valuable learning tool for all the teachers, students, and community members who access your server. The VisuWords applet is based on the open source work of Princeton University's WordNet, an English language lexical database. You will also need to download WordNet. As always, please read and follow all licenses if you expect to use these effective online tools.
