Shahi – A visual dictionary

Have you noticed that the world is becoming increasingly visual? Well, that’s OK with me because I actually understand things better when text is accompanied with images. I’m sure I’m not the only one. In the learning realm, images – either still or moving – aid and enhance textual presentation: photos, maps, film, video clip, images on websites, visual search engines – and now a visual dictionary: Shahi.

Shahi is a visual dictionary that combines Wiktionary content with Flickr images, and more!

What I like about Shahi is the different perspectives you get from the same word. Let’s take the example ‘racism’. Here is one of the results; I like the humour and originality:

The word ‘dangerous’ yielded these results amongst others:

and this:

Definitely not what I expected!

Thought I’d try a verb – collaborate:

Never know what you’ll find.

As a teacher librarian I’m thinking of collecting images to go with fiction genres. Here’s fantasy:

What about crime?

A metaphorical meaning: photography is not a crime

Classroom possibilities beg to be discovered! Comparison of different interpretations of the same picture, guessing games, inspiration for students’ own images to accompany words, springboard for creative writing, collaborative slide presentations on a theme or message, and so on.

Thanks to Amanda for sharing this.

By the way, this reminds me of a post from a while ago,  A picture’s worth a thousand words.

6 thoughts on “Shahi – A visual dictionary”

  1. McLuhan said, “The medium is the message.” The Internet is a feast for visual stimulation. Browsers are more likely to linger if they can feast their eyes on a gorgeous image which complements the writing. Little wonder that blogs use images so much. And for students the visual element captured in such applications as Glogster help to motivate learning.

  2. All very true, Paul. And if images help motivate learning, then as educators we could start collecting visual applications that could be used in the classroom. Maybe a wiki for this?

  3. Interesting that we posted on our blogs, information about the same tool, with the information from 2 different sources, hours apart

  4. Yes, when I saw your post last night mine was sitting in drafts for a couple of days. At first I thought I’d leave it, but then I thought, nah, I’ll finish it and post it anyway. Great minds!

Leave a Reply to Theresa McGee Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *