Box Of Tricks

I would like to introduce you to a very useful blog called Box of Tricks.

At first glance this Educational blog does not look anything special.  It's not overly appealing to the eye, looks a bit boring and wouldn't appeal to children.  Take a closer look however and you will realise it's designed to make teachers lives easier. With so many websites available today it takes a lot of time to sift through the bad ones to get to the good ones.  This website does it for you. 

It was set up by the head of Modern Foreign Languages at Nottingham High School.  Jose Picardo highlights the importance and usefulness of emerging technologies to help keep the classroom interactive and transform teaching and learning.  This shows how important technology has become across all subjects, after all, who would have thought technology could be so useful when teaching Spanish?

Box of Tricks reviews useful websites and Apps that may be used in education.  It gives ideas and tips on how and when to use them, as well as giving you a bit of background on why.  If there is a charge for downloading a recommended App or for using a website then it tells you and recommends a free alternative if available. 

The latest post is about an App called Wordfoto, which uses graphics to show words.  As you can see below, this word creates an image in your head which is not easy to forget and helps children to remember it.



There is an extensive list of approved websites listed on the A- Z tab, giving you lots to explore, including ideas to add to your own blog. Although the blog reviews haven't been updated for four months, this list was last updated on the 5th January 2013, so clearly the author is still actively using the site.

Comments can be added so you can give your own reviews and you can email Jose direct with questions.  There are various links to Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites giving you more options to contact him or gather more ideas from people.  This is not a man who is lurking in the shadows and instead seems very proud of his website.

I have gathered some great ideas from this website already and will be having a good scan through these recommended websites for more.  

Wordnik.com

Wordnik is a simple and easy to understand dictionary. The website has a very plain view but is split up into several sections to make it easy to find the part you learn from best.  For example, if you are a visual learner you could use the pictures to try to make sense of the word you are looking for.  Although some of the pictures are only loosely related to the original word so if young children are using this you would need to ensure they understood this.  

If you are an audio learner you can use the audio link to understand how the word should be pronounced and if you simply learn from explanations then there are several sections that go into great detail to help gain a full explanation.  One of these sections is definition which you would expect to see in any dictionary.  The information is taken from many different sources so  if you don't understand one explanation then you may see it better from another source.  The fact it does not allow user definitions is a good thing, as this means all information has to be verified first before it is added to the website. There is a section on the page you can use to add your comments and have a discussion about the word but this is separate and should be used with care.

The next very useful section is examples.  This lets you see the word in a sentence, showing it in as many different ways as possible, helping you to put the word into context to understand the meaning.  It shows you words it is related to and helps you to see the bigger picture.

This would all be useful in an educational setting as the different learning style approaches makes it fun to use.  The majority of children enjoy using technology to learn and why should English be any different.  A particularly fun part of the site is the word of the day or random word tabs.  You could use this in lessons to try to expand yours or a child's vocabulary so that you are learning together.  Adding this into the beginning of the day, you could try to encourage children to use the word in a sentence during the day.  Looking at the site now, the word of the day is "Chasse" and the random word is "Snood", instead of telling you what they mean though I will let you try the website out for yourself www.wordnik.com.