I'm hyped about Hyperwords!
Hyperwords is a tool that literally makes an entire webpage searchable. Naw huh...ah huh. Instead of the hyper links that already may exist on the page, any word that you choose to select by clicking and dragging over it can be researched in some way. Hyperwords allows you to search, shop, translate, and copy words. While doing my usual web shuffle in search of just the right Web 2.0 tool or other resources I came upon a German educational technologist's blog. I was able to use the hyperwords translation feature to actual read parts of the page. I found that to be quite cool and humbling. The western isn’t the center of the global community. It’s only a hub as many in other cultures are a part of the technology conversation.
I wish the developers would work on developing this tool for ereaders like the Kindle. Building prior knowledge before learning new material is important. A tool like hypermedia would help with that skill. Students would be able to look up words they didn’t know or search a city that is mentioned in a story. It really builds the ability to comprehend and improves reading literacy.
As I’ve spent many hours on the net hypermedia has helped me while reading some of the ‘scholarly’ pieces online. The vernacular of academia can be daunting.
Hyperwords is a Mozilla Firefox add-on. No Safari, yet. If this one does well, it may go proprietary. Snatch it now while it is free, but download Mozilla first.
http://www.hyperwords.net/index.html
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