

Show HN: Vocabulist – Automatically Fill Out Vocabulary Sheets - ahanmal
https://vocabulist.com/

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idreyn
This is neat! I wrote a script recently for extracting vocabulary from Chinese
texts...kind of the same idea. Are you rate-limited by the Merriam Webster API
at all?

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ahanmal
Thanks! No rate limiting - I've signed a contract with M-W allowing unlimited
use for 1 year for $XXXX. You can check out the their API at
[http://dictionaryapi.com/](http://dictionaryapi.com/). I use
[https://github.com/gniquil/mw_dictionary_api](https://github.com/gniquil/mw_dictionary_api)
to access their API, and haven't had many issues.

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bcjordan
Very cool, I imagine this could streamline lots of teachers' workflows.

Have you been in touch with teachers / thought about how to reach them with
this?

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ahanmal
Thanks for the complement! I'm actually a HS student, so I have limited time
to work on it and market it. I'm trying to get it into the hands of students
and teachers. I've been working with the Director of Ed Tech at my school and
sharing a lot on Twitter (Teachers Love Twitter), but only few have tried it
out. If you have any ideas for marketing, please share!!

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bcjordan
Check out the book Traction, it's got a nice framework for thinking about
outreach channels. For a teacher focused product I suspect a big channel will
be word of mouth.

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srtjstjsj
It's a homework-cheating service? Are you undermining student's education just
for fun, or for profit?

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ahanmal
Actually, as a High School Student, I feel that students waste a lot of time
copying definitions from around the web. I would copy them into Quizlet, and
then memorize them. Vocabulary is all about memorization, and unless you are
hand typing from a paper dictionary, you are not really memorizing.

I try to look at it like this: If you had 1 hour to prepare for your
vocabulary quiz, would you rather spend 20 minutes copying and 40 minutes
studying, or 5 minutes copying and 55 minutes studying.

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prawn
The first suggestion you make on the front of your site is to print and give
it to the teacher.

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ahanmal
If the sheets are handed to a teacher, there is clear Vocabulist branding. The
teacher should know that something's fishy. The main idea is for students to
study.

I'll probably change the front page text in the near future.

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wodenokoto
That is very cool. Can you talk a bit about which algorithms you use and what
data you use?

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ahanmal
Thanks! There is really no algorithm, all I do is take individual words from a
document or the inputed text, and call Merriam Webster's API with it. In the
future, I plan on expanding to include foreign languages.

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wodenokoto
Oh, I was too lazy to sign up for testing, so I thought it was a "fill in the
blank" \- that's how all the vocabulary exercises I get in school work.

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kissickas
Did HN bring it down already?

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ahanmal
Just scaled up some more Heroku instances. It should be good to go.

