{"id":28,"date":"2008-01-21T10:30:15","date_gmt":"2008-01-20T22:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mindspacesolutions.com\/blog\/?p=28"},"modified":"2008-01-21T10:30:15","modified_gmt":"2008-01-20T22:30:15","slug":"a-world-of-acronyms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mindspacesolutions.com\/blog\/28\/a-world-of-acronyms\/","title":{"rendered":"A World of Acronyms"},"content":{"rendered":"

I stumbled upon an interesting Acronym Search<\/a>\u00a0tool today that I thought had interesting potential uses in the classroom. I guess I am just one of those (annoying?) guys who likes making acronyms, so seeing what is already out there also has some appeal. But I know that I am not alone and suspect that this could also engage some students in some interesting activities.<\/p>\n

As a starter, you can search for acronoms of your name. Who would have thought there were 9 main acronyms of ‘ERIC’ and another 91 less common ones? As these acronyms generally represent organisations or concepts, it is even more astounding to see the huge variety of that these acronyms represent – in my case, from “Educational Research Information Clearinghouse” to “Ervmisbe’s Intelligent Combat-Armour”, although there was a high strangely high proportion of education-related acronyms. Coincidence? Anyway, getting students to do an acronym search for their name, then choosing some of the results to Google and write a summary paragraph on could be an interesting option.<\/p>\n

It also told me 14 acronyms had ‘ERIC’ in their meanings. This could provide interesting insight into a project, when the topic has already been set. For example, a search of ‘SHARK’ revealed “White Shark Research Institute (Cape Town, South Africa)” and “Outlaw Shark Digital Interface Unit”.<\/p>\n

And for a more creative project, this resource could support students in creating their own acronyms, either on a given topic, or to fit a given word.<\/p>\n\n\n