Visual Thesaurus
Wow. Today’s shiny contraption is unfortunately not free, but still…
“The Visual Thesaurus is an interactive dictionary and thesaurus which creates word maps that blossom with meanings and branch to related words. Its innovative display encourages exploration and learning. You’ll understand language in a powerful new way.” –product website
Visual Thesaurus by Thinkmap, Inc. is a visual dictionary and thesaurus with integrated mapping features. You may have seen integrated search mapping on Kartoo
or the Ebsco/Groxis Visual Search database interface. The website itself tries overmuch to inspire a sense of community through blog-style articles and posts on writing, marketing, instruction, and other professions for which one assumes a visual thesaurus might come in handy. Nevertheless, the product has numerous potential applications which benefit from development of word maps and visual representations of world relationships.Available in desktop and online editions, Visual Thesaurus has over 145,000 English words and 115,000 meanings which can be explored through virtual word maps. Hover over a word to determine its meaning or use the color coding to develop an understanding of part of speech and verb tense. The Virtual Thesaurus offers audible pronunciations in British and American variations.
The online edition is clearly more robust with multiple languages, customizable wordlists, and lifetime upgrades for an annual fee whereas the desktop version is a one-time purchase with minor updates and major upgrades at additional cost. Although I don’t see a lot of my students as the target audience for a proprietary product requiring a substantial investment, I can absolutely see the value. Since the Ebsco/Groxis visual interface went live I have seen students continually stunned and amazed at the ability it has given them to intuit the search process and understand how results are (and are not) relevant to their information needs.
