Part of the Cool Sites series
In every subject students must acquire new vocabulary, which is often taught through rote memorization. How do we engage learners to engage with new vocabulary? In a previous post I shared with you 12 word cloud resources. Now, I want to share how I make vocabulary engaging by using various websites in conjunction with the word cloud tool, Tagul.
Tagul Video Tutorial
With Tagul you can:
- create a word cloud by pasting in text or from a url.
- choose to have your word in a variety of shapes such as a heart, star, rectangle, or cloud.
- choose which specific website you would like to draw your links from for each of your tags.
- By default, Tagul will have the clickable links lead to Google search results.
- In order to customize the link to go to a specific website, replace the Google search link with the website’s search link and at the end add $tag.
- To get the website’s search link, you type in a word in the search box and a link will show up that has an “=” sign. Copy the html address up to and including the equal sign. Paste this in the Tags’ Links Pattern box and add $tag at the end.
The following video tutorial will show you the process.
Lesson Example
This is a Tagul word cloud I used to help my students learn about the Winter Olympics. My adult English language learners click on any of the words in the cloud and find a video, image, or article related to that word. I used Nik Peachey’s tip on using Vocab Grabber to create my word list for the Winter Olympics to copy and paste into the text box instead of having the system grab words from a website. This lesson helped my students learn vocabulary within a specific context and choose which topic they wanted to explore. The students then brought in their findings to talk about in class. I embedded this in my class wiki for the students.
Vocabulary Resources
You can use a variety of websites to help your students define words aside from typical dictionaries. Here are some ideas and their search codes to copy and paste into the Tags’ Links Pattern box:
- Visuwords– Enter words into the search box to find an interactive mindmap of the word with associations, synonyms, and definitions. The url to paste is http://www.visuwords.com/?word=$tag
- Wordia– Search for a word and a person defines the word in a video. Students can upload their own videos defining the words. The url to paste is http://www.wordia.com/Search?query=$tag
- Kidstube– Type in a search and find kid friendly links to videos, audio files, blogs, and images. The url to paste is http://www.kidstube.com/search.php?type=videos&keyword=$tag
- National Geographic– Find videos, images, and articles on a variety of topics. The url to paste is http://www.nationalgeographic.com/search/?search=$tag
- Neo K12– Educational videos and lessons for K-12 in math, science, and social studies. The url to paste is http://www.neok12.com/php/search.php?qry=$tag
- History– Find videos, images, and articles on a variety of historical topics. The url to paste is http://www.history.com/search.do?searchText=$tag
- Word Pics– Illustrated English vocabulary for adults learning by words on pictures. The url to paste is http://wordpic.com/?s=$tag
- TED Talks– TED videos with inspirational speakers on a variety of topics. The url to paste is http://www.ted.com/search?q=$tag
- Earth Touch– Videos about wildlife all over the world. The url to paste is http://www.earth-touch.com/search/#page=1&SearchString=$tag
- WatchKnow– Videos that teach students about math, science, and other school subjects. The url to paste is http://www.watchknow.org/SearchResults.aspx?SearchText=$tag
- School Tube– Student friendly videos on a variety of topics. The url to paste is http://www.schooltube.com/videosearch?q=$tag
Challenge:
Tagul the next chapter, vocabulary list, or article you want your students to read.
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How can you use Tagul to improve a lesson?
