IC21stCenturyEngagement: BP5_2010032

WordSift is a product of primarily Stanford University Doctoral students using a grant and was designed to assist teachers “manage the demands of vocabulary and academic language in their text materials.” Because of its visual connection to words, the tool is especially helpful in supporting English Language Learners.

One simply sifts through texts by cutting and pasting it into WordSift and you can engage in a “verbal quick-capture!” The program quickly identifies important words that appear in the text. Although this function is available in Tag Cloud programs on the web, Wordsift has added the ability to mark and sort lists of words important to teachers. The authors have also integrated the Visual Thesaurus (brought to FSO students in our library at the behest of Dr. Deason). And when a student clicks on the cloud Tag, the program displays instances of sentences in which the word is used. I’ve prayed for a program that would create sentences using the vocabulary words I assign.

This program will perfectly dovetail my ABC book assignment. The students can use this program to check the sentences they create and the site is a visual resource to help them comprehend the meaning of the word. Once they’ve seen images on this site, they’ll be better equipped to exactly know the type of graphic they want to choose from Flickr to represent the meaning of the words they’ve chosen to include in their ABC book.

To try the program, I used a recent vocabulary word my students learned, androcracy, and its definition, government rule by men. The first screen shot is the composite screen I received which includes the Visual Thesaurus and the second two shots are of specific images the program generated.t rule by men. The first screen shot is the composite screen I received which includes the Visual Thesaurus and the second two shots are of specific images the program generated.