Emerging Technologies Consulting

So, remember back a week or so ago, when I was reviewing in alphabetical order all the social software on the eHub site?  Well, I got a little bored with it, so I decided to switch strategies and just look at things that would be useful for education, but even that got boring.  It is overwhelming how many tools there are out there, many of which will be gone before the proverbial ink has dried on the review.  But I’m still going to try to sort through a few of them, interspersed with more interesting, I hope, content.

Today’s installment is more cute than useful, but I thought most people would appreciate the cuteness. Addictionary is a site for creating and adding new words to the English language.  People vote on whether the word is a good one or not.  For example, there is the word “autoquette” to describe the unspoken rules of the road, or Feng “Schwii” to describe the careful arranging of furniture for safe and optimal Wii playing.  They also issue challenges to come up with words for things we don’t yet have words for.  The current challenge is to come up with a word to describe the act of warming your feet on someone else.  So maybe the site isn’t full of intellectual heft, but it’s creative and might even be used to launch a discussion about how language develops (hint: it’s not usually by issuing challenges to come up with new words).