Thing #19 Go with the Flow

I looked at the flowchart Gliffy and the mind map Bubbl.us. Gliffy makes it easy to create, share and collaborate with diagrams. I thought the layouts you can create are very professional looking. There seem to be many ways to use this in a school setting. One of the examples I saw involved inserting a map of a country and over-laying a flow-chart with facts about the country. You can also insert pictures in the information boxes as well as text. This would be a great way to synthesize after finishing research. I've used Kidspiration and Inspiration with my students, but as I said the look of Gliffy is not so juvenile looking as these two pieces of software. According to the information on the website you can use it to collaborate, share and edit diagrams with others. I created a simple seating chart and used the share button. I e-mailed it to myself to see if I could edit it, but was not successful. I plan on going back to it later and play with it to see if it is editable after sharing with others. I probably need to go into the settings tools to change my settings. I tried everything I could think of, but grew tired of trying several times and not being successful.

I wasn't able to spend as much time with Bubbl.us as I would have liked. I think I'm on overload trying to finish all 23 "things" by the 1st of Feburary. It was supposed to have a lot of the same features as Gliffy. I seemed to have more trouble with Bubbl.us. I didn't find any tool bars, just a square in the middle of the page to begin with. I knew enough about Kidspiration and Inspiration to be able to create several boxes linked to each other with information inside each box. After reading some of the posts on other librarian's blogs, most of whom thought Bubbl.us was easier than Gliffy, I think I may have missed something. I do plan to go back later to explore Bubbl.us more extensively. It is advertised as being able to create mind maps, share and work with friends, embed maps in blogs or websites and e-mail mind maps to others.