Teach42

I just checked out WordSource and so far I’m digging it (meaning that I like it and that I voted for it on Digg). It’s a social dictionary, or as they put it, “The Online Dictionary is Reborn”. The byline is “Never leave your browsers address bar. Go to word.sc/[yourwordhere]” and that’s pretty much how it works. So if you want to lookup the definition of impetuous (and no, it is not Senator Matt Murphy), you just go to http://word.sc/impetuous and you’ll learn that it means,

characterized by undue haste and lack of thought or deliberation; “a hotheaded decision”

Pretty cool, eh? Well, not really. Handy, but not cool. Yet. You can also vote whether you like the word or not, which is cute. Want more to vote on? Well, you can tag whether the word makes you feel good, whether you have trouble spelling it, who thinks they embody that word, and even who faileda spelling test because of that word. Some of those are just interesting, but unremarkable. However, take all the words that people have marked that they have trouble spelling and you have a great new word wall for the classroom.

Additionally, and this is my favorite feature, you can add photos to the word! So for example, if you look up the word puppy, you’ll see that someone added a digital photo of their puppy. There aren’t very many images in there yet, but as people add more and more I think this could be a really nice little resource for students.

I know what you’re thinking, what’s to stop somebody from uploading pornographic images to definitions. Well, it seems as though all image uploads are reviewed by the staff before they go live. So even though it is built by the people for the people, there is some degree of supervision to make sure that images are clean and appropriate.

Are there ‘naughty words’? Well, yes. Just like in the dictionary. What’re ya gonna do? Unfortunately, I just don’t think there’s any way to stop students from giggling when they look up what the word scrotum means. Hey, better they look it up on a dictionary, than on Technorati. If you don’t know what I’m refering to, then read this article.

Regardless, I love the site. Now will somebody who’s more geeky than I am create an easy to use bookmarklet, so that when I highlight a word and click on the bookmarklet, it’ll take me to the definition on WordSource? Thanks!

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