Google Doc Research Tool for Defining Words or Researching a Word

A nifty feature of Google Docs is the research options. Right click on a word and you can choose to define the word over in the side of the document. This is a great excuse to get students to start looking up words they do not know. Share documents with students and ask them to find x words they do not know and use the define feature in Google Docs. After a few times of using this assignment, students should be in the habit of simply right clicking and looking up words rather than just skipping them.

Rewordify.com...Understand what you read.

"Rewordify.com is powerful, free, online reading comprehension software. It helps people understand difficult English faster, and helps them learn words in new ways."
This tool was developed to help students read complex passages. Rewordify takes complex passages and puts them in simple terms. There are several settings that student can use to help them understand what they are reading. Watch this video to get a better idea of how this tool can support your students on a desktop, laptop, Smart Phone, iPad, iPod or other mobile devices.

 

Diigo

 Diigo is a powerful research tool and a knowledge-sharing community. 



This tool helps students organize their research and better make use of time in computer labs and reading online.  Because it utilizes the Cloud, it is very Earth friendly. There is an educators sign up which gives you more features.  With an educators account, you can create student accounts without an email address.  
Click here to get started!

Students use Twurdy for Research

Do your students have difficulty with online research because the search results' readability is too difficult? With Twurdy, the results are color coded based on readability levels to help students choose more appropriate webpages.

The name Twurdy is based on the word play, "Too Wordy".

So, how does it work?

In Twurdy's own words:

"Twurdy uses text analysis software to "read" each page before it is displayed in the search results. Then Twurdy gives each page a readability level along with a color coded system to help users to determine how easy the page will be to understand."

Try Twurdy as an option the next time you ask your students to do online research.

Kids Search Site

Have you been looking for some kid friendly sites to use with your children to do research? Do you need some kid friendly sites for them to search for information? Then check out this site that has many possibilities.

Research with Google

This site offers so many Google search tools all in one place. I found a few new Google search tools I did not even existed. Hope you can find some new ways to search.