Visually Capture and Organize Ideas!

The product is very good as a teaching tool because it is very simple but provides the student with a lot of knowledge. Connecting ideas from a main subject allows the student to better understand what they're learning, without having to be lectured by a teacher. The ideas are self driven and keep the students engaged with an entertaining design.

Although Popplet is not a tool that helps teach content, it is a fabulous tool to help students use their creativity to visually share their learning and create multi-media organizers. Popplet can be used cross-curricular, which I believe is always a bonus to have a versatile web-based tool in one’s toolbox! The free version, using the Try It Out mode is plenty for students to be able to create, organize, and re-organize ideas, thoughts, and data. The only negative is that students cannot save a draft and return to work at a later time in the Try It Out mode and the free version limits users to 10 Popplets (but these are savable in draft form). Though, for a minimal yearly fee, Popplet is a tool I would consider purchasing an account for. Finally, Popplets can be saved as .pdf, .jpeg, and .png files, which makes them easily sharable in blogs, websites, newsletters, etc. This feature can really be helpful in generating communication around an organizer a student created, both peer-to-peer and teacher-to-peer.

Unfortunately, the Terms of Service are nebulous for the under 13 crowd. The terms state: "The Site is not directed to children and children are not eligible to use our Services. Protecting the privacy of children is very important to us. We do not collect or maintain personal information from people we actually know are under 13 years old, and no part of the Site or Services is designed to attract people under 13 years old. By using our Site, You represent that You are at least 13 years old." However, the tool itself seems very geared for students in elementary or middle grades as it isn't sophisticated enough for high school students. The Popplet for Schools area of the site recommends that a teacher or parent create an account, but that is counter to their Terms of Service. In addition to the confusion about student use, it is limited in its language support, offering only Japanese, Korean, and Hebrew. Its simplicity is appealing, but the complexity in terms of use makes it hard to recommend for younger students and classrooms at the elementary level.