Technology Resources I Checked Out DLC #2

Wordsmyth-I like the Children's and Beginner's dictionary at Wordsmyth because they have easy to read entries with simple definitions.  You can also make a vocab quiz or crossword puzzle.  I tried making a quiz with some Reading Street vocab words and the sentences they created as a cloze exercise seemed very basic.  I didn't care for it. 
Lexipedia-I could see myself trying this out.  You can look up a word and it gives you nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, synonyms, antonyms.  Pretty cool!
Merriam-Webster Visual Dictionary Online-This dictionary has an index to quickly connect words to images.  I looked up the word frost and it gave me two images.  I also looked up volcano and it showed a picture of a volcano during eruption and it even labeled the volcano.  That was pretty neat!
Wordle-At school I had difficulty using Wordle so I went with Word It Out instead.  I played around with Wordle at home and I like it so much more.  It seems easier to create your word cloud.  There seems to be more you can do with the color, font, and display of the words.  I am going to try using Wordle next time.  I also took a look at all the ways to use Wordle and got some great ideas like: Having your class reflect on what they have learned, using it to take a poll about a topic, character traits, self-esteem boost where each person writes a word to describe the person or something nice and then a wordle is created all about that person, and using it in math to create a word cloud all about fraction vocabulary. 

I don't always have access to the computer lab during the day because a class is using it.  It would be helpful to have a few laptops that could be checked out for students to use for projects like these.

The Empty Coaster made by Jack at Pic-Lit

The Starfish Story