Do you remember when you were at school and you were given the task of writing a poem that rhymed? Do you remember the agony of not being able to find the word you needed? Well, students in the 21st century need worry no more thanks to Write Rhymes, a handy new tool that will find the rhyming word you need in your hour of need.
All you need to do is type in the text you’ve come up with, press alt and click on the word that you need rhymed. Write rhymes will come up with alternatives for you to consider. Dead simple. Yet another reason why we as educators need to come up with high order thinking tasks that are going to extend our students thinking. Tools are becoming available to do the thinking for our students. They will find them. We need to be rethinking our classroom practice to foster thinking tasks that require more than highlighting a word and having the answer magically appear! There’s the challenge; we must rise to it.
That’s not to say I won’t be using Write Rhymes as a tool in my classroom this year. Teaching our students how to find these time saving devices is another skill entirely. To improve their digital literacy skills they need to be taught how to find tools that will make their lives easier -that’s smart too. As my husband always says to me, ‘You have to work smarter, not harder Jen.’ Advice I don’t always manage I have to admit, but an essential digital literacy skill that our students should be learning as we move into the 21st Century.
Lucacept - intercepting the Web 