Eye-Catching Flowcharts in a Flash
Community Review for Popplet
My Take
Students can easily create their own Popplets after a very brief teacher demo. Color coding, image uploading, links and text-sizing enable students to create organized charts for concept review or subject presentation. Instead of handing out a worksheet for students to fill out, students can build their own flowcharts/diagrams using digital resources. This gives students an opportunity to use their design skills, while sorting out their ideas, emphasizing/de-emphasizing connections. Students can also share their Popplets with selected students, assigning them as collaborators. Collaboration is a necessary 21st Century skill.
How I Use It
I use Popplet to help students review story concepts, creating a separate popple for setting, main characters, character traits, genre and theme. I've also used it to organize teaching materials for lessons on 1) digital citizenship 2) file organization with Google Drive 3) overviews of current and outdated resources in the computer lab. The program is so easy to use: I can create a great looking Popplet within minutes, uploading images and hyperlinks to expand on concepts. Popplets can be posted to Facebook or Twitter. They can be emailed to 10 addresses at a time, shared through links or embedded to webpages. I often embed mine to my blog or teacher account at KidBlog, asking students to comment, later publishing those comments for all the students to view.