I've never used any sort of digital concept mapping tool... but for being my introductory experiment into such things, I am thoroughly impressed with SpiderScribe! It is online mapping and brainstorming tool which teachers and students (or whoever needs to organize their thought process a little) can connect and easily share ideas with notes, files, maps, calendar events, and more.
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| This is the initial demo screen that comes up. You can manipulate it pretty easily and play around before diving in to design a mind map of your own. |
I did have some trouble getting the introductory video on the website to play, but I believe that's more a problem with my new laptop (that I know nothing about) than with the site! Nonetheless, I found an independent instructional video that helped. Although I really only had to watch the first few minutes and then play around with it on my own. EdShelf demo
My daughter's second birthday is coming up, and overly-excited-about-party-throwing-mom that I am, I decided to brainstorm for her shindig. Not really classroom oriented, but the theory and practice will easily translate. Trust me. So I started out by just plopping in random text boxes with all the children's books I'm thinking about utilizing. Brainstorming, if you will. I easily pulled in an image of the invitation that I'd already created - using my new-found Photoshop skills (woot-woot! Major Project application!). Then I started creating headings - like "Cupcakes" and "Food". I quickly figured out how to color-code my text boxes according to the headings. One thing that I did wish that I could do that I wasn't able to would be to pull in web links directly... as in the recipes for specific cupcakes that I'd found online. So that's a negative that could perhaps be addressed by SpiderScribe in the future. I suppose I could have saved the recipes as documents and blah blah blah but that seemed like too much work for a small experiment.
The actual mapping tools are super easy to use - even young children could easily handle this program. Creating and dragging text boxes, then connecting them with arrows was so simple. And fun! They could pull in images, documents, and maps with ease. It would be nice to be able to directly link online content - links to applicable websites, etc. but regardless, I could totally see using this in a classroom. I read some other reviews about the ease of sharing content (it's very easy) and mind maps can also be converted to PDFs in a snap and then printed. Putting it up on the projector or Smartboard so that a class could map out vocabulary - color coding words into categories or by level comprehension... assign groups and roles for projects... create study guides... graphic organizers. The possibilities kind of seem endless! I could see making an interactive art history project where I pull in several images of famous paintings and then as a class we drag them under headings to organize them by artist or style, etc. I love this program!!
PROS:
1) SOOOO easy
2) Fun and inviting for even very young learners
3) Easy to bring in other files, images, maps
4) A ton of classroom applications
5) Simple to share and collaborate with
CONS
1) Unable to link web content
2) You have to pay to use it past the trial period.
Seriously, guys, I'm kind of sad that I have to cancel my subscription (I don't have a ton of use for this at the moment...other than for this assignment.) But I wish I did! It's great! So I will totally keep this program in mind as I enter in to the teaching profession.
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