Thing #14 - Go with the Flow!

Flowcharts and mind maps are definitely encouraged at our school.  However, the ones we have available are contained inside a 3-ring binder with one copy on copy paper and one copy on a transparency sheet.  Exploring these tools online is a great idea!  The first one I chose to check into is Bubble.us.  This one is considered a mind map tool.  I used it to create a chart of 5th grade Geometry terms and how each are related.  Here is a screen capture of my creation:

This was very easy to do.  You can create the entire thing without ever having to sign up for an account.  When finished, I just took a screen capture of my work.  However, if you want to save your work for later use or editing, you will need to sign up for a free account.

Next, I explored Gliffy.  On this site you can create all sorts of diagrams and charts.  The one I chose to play around with was the Floorplan creator.  Originally, my hope was to create a floorplan of my classroom.  However, really for that, the choice of items was limited.  It was really geared more for an office.  It was really easy to use and choose the size and items you wanted to add.  I think it would be great for anyone looking to design an office or maybe their own home. Adding my drawing to my blog was extremely easy as well.  Once you signed up for an account, you simply clicked to add it to your blog.  You could choose the size you wanted and copy and paste the html code right into your blog.  This site might be useful to create the layout of your school and add in fire drill exits and so on.