Saturday, April 17, 2010

BP5_2010042_Web2.0Tool2


eyePlorer.com, The Graphical Knowledge Engine

Don’t you wish your brain could retrieve millions of facts about a certain topic or person instantly? Since we are not able to do that there is a web 2.0 tool that can help. It is called eyePlorer and it’s a knowledge program that works like the brain.

To get started, simply pick a topic you would like to research and type it into the box, once you begin your search, eyePlorer will show all the different eyeSpots, these are concepts that are related to the topic. The larger the eyeSpot the more closely linked it is to your topic, the smaller the least related.

If your class is going to read the book To Kill a Mockingbird you can search the title. Many different connections to the book will appear in the map divided into the following sections: Place, Work, Health, Time, Organizations, Person, Society, Science and Science & Technology. Clicking on eyeSpots within one of the sections will show more information and it can also link you to other connections. For example, after searching To Kill a Mockingbird under the Science & Technology section the word “chifforobe” appears as a very small eyeSpots. After clicking on the eyeSpot, it says that chifforobe appears on page 75 and the word also occurs in an episode of 30 Rock. Some of the other connections are: irony, racial segregation, Deep South, Atticus Finch, Pulitzer Prize, Truman Capote, Autobiography and many more.

Students can get so involved with eyePlorer that they just may lose track of time. After all the serious work of researching school topics such as Math, Science, History and Language Arts, they will probably want to find out more about subjects of their own interests.

EyePlorer is a new way to gather, keep track and send information on topics of interests.

1 comment:

  1. Great tool!! I was actually trying to figure out how I could use this in my class, since I have kindergartners I opted for a something else. but, i use it for myself. It is better than a dictionary.

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