Tech Tools for Learning - VocabGrabber

Other than early childhood education and homeschooling, I have a real interest in technology. In my past life I really enjoyed programming and all things geeky. So, when time permits I still enjoy keeping up with these geeky interests. Along the way, I often find tools and websites which also help with homeschooling and educating our children. So, when time permits, I will try and feature some of these tools and websites on this blog. Some will assist with educating children, and others might help in running our homes and organization.

The first tool I want to feature is the VocabGrabber. This is a new tool that has been released by the Visual Thesaurus company.

How does Vocabgrabber work? Here is the description from their website:

VocabGrabber analyzes any text you're interested in, generating lists of the most useful vocabulary words and showing you how those words are used in context. Just copy text from a document and paste it into the box, and then click on the "Grab Vocabulary!" button. VocabGrabber will automatically create a list of vocabulary from your text, which you can then sort, filter, and save.

Select any word on the list and you'll see a snapshot of the Visual Thesaurus map and definitions for that word, along with examples of the word in your text. Click on the word map or the highlighted word in the example to see the Visual Thesaurus in action.

Samples of text are available on their website so you can try out the tool. I used the Oliver Twist text sample and the results can be viewed in the image below.

By selecting to view only vocabulary words, the word cloud changed displaying words which the reader would need to know to understand the text. I then clicked on the word pauper and was instantly presented with the meaning of the word and the location in the text. This is definitley a great tool for those language arts lessons.