Vocab Grabber is a new feature from the people who created The Visual Thesaurus.
To quote from an email I received from them:
“…it intelligently extracts key vocabulary from any text you’re interested in, allowing you to sort, filter, and save the most relevant vocab words.”
It’s a bit hard to explain — you probably want to check it out directly.
To be truthful, it’s neat-looking, but I’m not sure it’s particularly useful to students or teachers. But I’m quite happy to be shown that I’m wrong. Let me know if I am…
Wait a minute! Isn’t one of the mantras of literacy teachers “preview, preview, preview”?! VocabGrabber is an excellent tool for helping teachers introduce the key vocabulary from a given text before tackling the actual text. Sure, you can find those key words yourself, but this tool does it for you (within seconds) and then allows your students to explore the words in context and in interactive word maps. Larry, try it with text you are about to teach, and let your students decide!
Georgia,
Fair enough suggestion. I will.
Larry
There is however a price you have to pay for it !
Is there anything similar so far that doesn’t need and annual payment?
sec
Actually, I know that you have to pay for Visual Thesaurus access, but I believe Vocab Grabber is free. I might be wrong, however. You might want to explore this “The Best…” list for alternatives:
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2009/07/15/the-best-sites-where-ells-can-learn-vocabulary/
Larry