Thing 2 - Wordsift

I am already familiar with Wordle. It's fun and easy for students to use to find the main idea. So this time I explored Wordsift and I really love its potential. It does everything wordle does, (without all the creative, colorful options) and much, much more. I especially like the links to definitions in the visual thesaurus, the links to other sites, and less so the clip art. It does have images that are inappropriate for younger students who can use Wordle comfortably most of the time unless an inappropriate wordle is featured on the home page. I chose to wordsift my first posting on Thing 1. It came up with some fun connections and youtube sites that were helpful. I think students will especially benefit from the visual dictionary which will help them identify key words for searching. Besides the occasional clip art issues and lack of creative freedom, I'm also not fond of the fact that you can't remove common words like you can in wordle.