Xefer: Wikipedia:
xefer.com/wikipedia
I find it far far too easy to get sucked into this little tool. You
enter a term, and it charts the shortest difference from the term to
Philosophy within WIkipedia. It does this in real time, scrolling the
scanned interim terms on the left while the radial graph keeps
bouncing around reforming itself as it discovered newer and shorter
paths to the target.
Add one term, and it shows a straight line. Add more sequentially, and
it keeps spinning off interactions with your original. If you wish,
you can also add multiple terms at once separated by commas. I tried
taking nouns from a list of titles of Basho's most popular haiku in
English translation.
snow,bee,caterpillar,cicada,rain,night,cuckoo,cotton,infirm,monk,tea,m orning,skeleton,wild,pond
I did another image exploring relationships between concepts in a
class one of my colleagues is teaching soon. I think I'll share that
with her.
I wish it would allow you to enter both a start term and a target
term. That would make it a really nifty teaching tool, supporting
exploration. As it is, this is an interactive tree. You can mouse over
terms to highlight them, and click on one to open the corresponding
Wikipedia article. I could imagine asking a student to choose a term
or assigning terms, and asking them to write something exploring the
relationships between the concepts. Could be very interesting. Or use
it to generate improv prompts, or poetry prompts. Lots of potential.
