Google has done it again. I really like all the neat things they come up with. This one is great for expanding your vocabulary and finding related concepts. It is called Wonder Wheel. On the regular search page, near the top, click on Options, and then choose Wheel in the left-hand menu. It works like the Visual Thesaurus, but is free.
Google Translate has added new features making it a lot easier to use. For those of us in Japan, the best one is “romanization” which allows you to get the pronunciation through roman letters of the kanji in question. Read more about it at Mashable. Here is a video that shows the new features.
I finally emptied by inbox, the holy grail of GTD (Getting Things Done, a book by David Allen). GTD is a system of organizing and dealing with incoming information. Most of that information for me is in the form of email. A great implementation of the system in software is the GTDInbox, a free Firefox add-on that really works well.
It was, therefore, funny, today, to get an error message for GTD, presumably because my inbox was empty!
UPDATE! A nice GTDInbox employee pointed out this was a problem with my web access, not with GTDInbox.
Showa ELC, or English Language and Communication, is our unofficial department website for students and community building. I’ll be posting any further tools for students over there, and tools for teachers here. I’ll be maintaining that web site too, so keep a look out for new stuff there. Set up your News Reader to get both this site and that one. You won’t be sorry.
This ends the 100 Tools in 100 Days. I’ll continue posting ideas and tools here, but add other topics like Japan, social life, economics and politics as well. I hope you have enjoyed these tools and will use some of them. I certainly will.
Some of you will end up making web pages for your students. This will liven up any message you have to send to them, such as a warning about a deadline or important information they need to see. It is called a screed. Try it, it only takes about 30 seconds to make one, then just save it to your computer and use it like any regular picture.