Resource to Review: Vocabgrabber

I just got this message from Ben Zimmer, executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus.

I wanted to tell you about a great new vocabulary tool that we just launched this week. It's called VocabGrabber, and it intelligently extracts key vocabulary from any text you're interested in, allowing you to sort, filter, and save the most relevant vocab words. We think it's a tremendous boon to teachers and students alike. Take a look at it here: http://www.vocabgrabber.com

It looks pretty interesting. I had some fun trying it out.

It is not free*. I have not used this with students so cannot properly assess this resource. You can test it with students for a 14 day trial period. After that you have to pay $2.95 US a month or $19.95 US a year for individuals. There is a desktop edition that you can load on a computer and use without an internet connection that costs $39.95 US. There are site licenses available for schools.

If you try it out, let us know what you think and whether you would consider purchasing it for literacy students to use.

*Update: See Ben Zimmer's comment below. I am wrong. "VocabGrabber is being offered as a free resource from the Visual Thesaurus. Many additional benefits come with a subscription to the Visual Thesaurus, but VocabGrabber can be used without a subscription."