Product Review: Franklin Dictionary and Thesaurus

Imagine the benefits of an electronic dictionary that corrects your spelling and talks to you.  You can type in a word you heard used in conversation, even if you don’t know how to spell it, and this device will use its phonetic spell corrector to show the right way to spell the word and give you its definition.  Or say that you come across a word in a book that you don’t know how to pronounce.  Type it in, learn the definition and hear it pronounced.

I’m talking about the Franklin Dictionary and Thesaurus.  This piece of assistive technology contains over 83,000 definitions and 41,000 thesaurus entries with 496,000 synonyms, games to help you build word skills, and more.  Let’s test out this assistive technology tool.

Upon turning the device on, it will automatically start a demo.  It’s a good idea to let it show you how to use it, but if you’re like me, you want to jump right in and experiment!  So hit the “Clear” button and you’ll be on the opening screen where it prompts you to type in a word.  The first thing I wanted to do was test the spell corrector, so I purposely misspelled “technology” by leaving out the “h”.

As you can see, I am presented with a list of possible words that I might have meant.  You can highlight the word you want by using the arrow keys and select it by pressing “Enter”.  You will then be given a dictionary definition, which you can have pronounced out loud by pressing the “Say” button.

Let’s try out the thesaurus.  I typed in the word “brave” and hit the button labeled “Thes”.  I am given a list of synonyms.

Now let’s say that I want to add one of these words to my own personal list to review later.  First I hit “Enter” and the word at the top of the screen is highlighted.  I can use the arrow keys to highlight a different word.  Once I have decided which word to add, I hit the button “List”.

Now I have the option to add the word to my list, or delete it.  You can access the list any time by pressing the “List” button.  It will hold up to 40 words, and you can even add words that aren’t in the dictionary (though the manual warns that this takes up more memory than words that are in the dictionary).

The last thing I want to check out is Hangman!  That’s right, among the three word-building games is the classic Hangman.  The number of wrong guesses you can get is displayed on the screen, and if you don’t get the answer, it will provide it for you in the end.  You can then hit “Enter” to see the definition.

Pretty cool piece of assistive technology if you ask me.  It’s very easy to use, but if you get confused, you can always hit the “Help” button or watch the demo.  Interested in trying it for yourself?  Head on over to the INDATA Loan Library and sign up to borrow it for free.