iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

"One of the things that I often make my students do when they're conducting online research about a topic is to make a list of all of the terms and words they know that are associated with that topic. Google's old Wonder Wheel product was a helpful aid in that process as was the now defunct Wiki Mind Map. In any case, making lists of vocabulary terms can help students recall bits of information that then helps them in formulating and refining search queries.

I made this pre-search checklist a few years ago as a tool to help students think about what they know about a topic before they begin searching online. One of my ninth grade students computer science students used the third part of that checklist, "what are the words or phrases other people would use to describe your topic?" this morning when he was trying to come up with some ideas for a meditation app that he's designing and will eventually build with the MIT App Inventor. His answers and subsequent search took him in slightly new design direction."

Via Jim Lerman, Lars-Göran Hedström

It gives you a list of words you are likely to look up in the dictionary as far as the given text is concerned, guesses a good dictionary definition for the words along with example sentences. And finally, it also makes a quiz for the words using both the definitions and example sentences. (Of course we give you the answer key too.)

Via Nik Peachey