I don't recall when or where I first stumbled upon this little tool, but if I were a teacher, I would have to install it on my blog. Brought to us by Answers.com, the tool allows your readers the ability to double-click on any word that is not a link. Doing so will pop up a window with a definition of that word. (Don't double-click and continue to hold down the mouse. Just double-click.) So when a word or term bumfuzzles your students, they can simply double-click it for an information bubble, courtesy of Answers.com. Go ahead and try it: double click on the word "bumfuzzle." Yes, I thought that word would stump their search engine, but I was wrong.

Notice in the example used above the reader can query information about the selected (double-clicked) word from a variety of sources. Translations are even offered to Dansk (Danish), Nederlands (Dutch), Français (French), Deutsch (German), Ελληνική (Greek), Italiano (Italian), Português (Portuguese), Русский (Russian), Español (Spanish), Svenska (Swedish), 国话 (Chinese (Simplified)), 中國話 (Chinese (Traditional)), 日本語 (Japanese), 한국어 (Korean), العربيه (Arabic), and עברית (Hebrew). But there's more...

You can download a free guide for citing internet resources. Students even have quick access to a citation engine which will properly format an internet citation for them.

Did you want a search widget in your blog's sidebar? You have many designs and styles from which to choose. Just copy the code into your blog's template and you're up and running. And while Answers.com provides other free resources, you will need to visit their site to learn about them.

To install this tool simply visit this link. You will need to know a little bit about html and have access to your blog's template file. If you don't, get your web master to do it with you (you need to learn how to do this, right?!) as it will take less than 2 minutes! It's as simple as selecting a logo style that will appear on your blog (You can see the one on Practical Practice near the bottom of the sidebar.), giving them your name, email address, and blog's URL, and then copying the code they give you and pasting it into your blog's template file. Play with it on my site, read their web site, and see if this tool wouldn't benefit your readers!

Think of the compelling instructional applications this can have for you students!