Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Spelling City
Spellingcity.com is a free website that allows students (or teachers) to put in vocabulary words and then immediately tests them on it. The students put in up to 5 words and then in the test portion, they listen to the computer voice say it to them and put it in a sentence. There is also a section with games which I think students would be excited to explore and play with. The game section includes games that help students become familiar with alphabetizing words, spelling words in a hangman-like game and finding the missing letter in a word. This would help them to learn to spell and become comfortable and excited about their weekly spelling words. I think this might be too advanced for 1st grade students but 2nd and 3rd graders would be old enough to use the computer and enter in their vocab words.
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I was happy to discover your blog today. I was unable to find a contact link. I hope it's OK that I'm contacting you through a public comment.
ReplyDeleteI've developed an educational program for Windows called SpellQuizzer that helps students learn their spelling and vocabulary words. You set up the students' spelling lists in the software and then students practice their words on the computer. It has greatly helped my own children with their weekly spelling lists.
SpellingCity is indeed an excellent free tool for teachers and parents. But there are some advantages that SpellQuizzer offers over SpellingCity.com:
- SpellQuizzer doesn't require an open Internet connection. Many parents and educators prefer not to have their young children working on a computer with an open Internet connection due to all the undesirable material that is on the Internet. With SpellQuizzer there is no need to expose children to the world wide web.
- SpellingCity.com doesn't have recordings of all the words one might wish to practice. For those it does have, the sentences used aren't personalized. With SpellQuizzer you can make spelling lists for literally any words (or even facts) you wish your students to practice with. The recordings you make are in your voice rather than a stranger's. And you can personalize the recordings and even make them funny with an amusing sentence or funny voice. I always try to throw in some funny ones for my daughters such as "Handsome: Your daddy is the most handsome man on earth." That one got snickers. And of course a teacher can customize their recordings for their class with sentences about the different students, their school or the theachers in their school. "Promptly: - If you don't hand in your paper promptly Ms. Jones may make you read it to the class."
- SpellingCity.com may well be around for ever. Or it may go down for good tomorrow. There's no way to know for certain. A person who purchases a license for SpellQuizzer has the software for life whether I stay in business or not.
As I said, SpellingCity.com is an excellent free resource and I don't mean to attack it in any way with what I've said above. I'm only pointing out reasons one might prefer a product like SpellQuizzer. I would appreciate your posting about SpellQuizzer in An Educator's Opinion. You can learn more about the software at http://www.SpellQuizzer.com. There's a video demo you can watch at http://www.spellquizzer.com/SpellQuizzer-Demo.htm. I offer deep discounts to schools and school districts on site licenses.
I'm currently offering SpellQuizzer free to educators that contact me through http://www.SpellQuizzer.com/Contact.htm. In order to qualify for a free license one must supply an email address associated with an educational institution. Please feel free to post about this offer.
Thank you very much!
Dan Hite
TedCo Software
http://www.SpellQuizzer.com