Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Thing #19

I like to have things organized, and I see many ways the sites in this exercise could have benefitted me when I was teaching in a classroom. Still, there are many benefits to me as a librarian in the mind maps and flowcharts presented. I found bubbl.us very easy to use and think students would find it appealing also. It is cute (technology language) how subtopic bubbles are called babies and fun to see the small explosions with fire that come up when a user X's out of a bubble. Color options also make this process fun, but how many schools allow printing in color? Not mine. I thought it was interesting how the creators of the site included the "team's" professional information, including credentials and college degree info. I had a reading teacher ask me yesterday how she could streamline the brainstorming for a research project over the 1960s that just seemed too broad. I was excited to tell her I'd make a mind map online from her general ideas that she could then edit and tailor to her specific needs. I finished it this morning, and she was thrilled!

I also found great benefit in playing with Gliffy. I used the floorplan feature because, sadly, I have used a hand-drawn seating chart for the library for seven years now. I was impressed with the variety of symbols one can use to create various floorplans. The only trouble I had with it was getting the width small enough to fit on a standard sheet of paper. I made adjustments in the width column, but it never changed. I'll play with it some more, but until then, I did the old manual job of copying and taping it together and shrinking it on the Xerox machine. Still, it looks much more professional than the sketch I've been using for so long. Gliffy is a site to remember, to share, and to use.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for the review of Gliffy! Try this link for printing tips:http://www.gliffy.com/faqs.shtml#2

Our forum has some great ideas too--or better yet, get those students to figure it out~ Thanks again,
debik at gliffy dot com

Zeeburt said...

Wow! You never know who's "listening"...