Text 2 Mind Map - Visualize Your Outline

Today I had the chance to check out Text 2 Mind Map (text2mindmap.com).  This is a website where you can create a visual representation of an outline.  I am honestly not sure when I would want to do this personally, but I can see how a student could have fun creating a mind map to outline a research paper or project.  It seems like a fun way to organize your thoughts.  I decided to make an example out of all the things that I still have left to do this semester, and then to cheer myself up I added a couple of things that I am looking forward to (see category: Fun).  Here is the map:

Wow!  Fortunately I still have a lot to do so that I could create this impressive looking mind map.  However, I really can't wait until all that is left is the fun.

Chartgo.com - Pretty charts and graphs made easy

If you need to make a pretty chart to use in your powerpoint presentations or in a class project, chartgo.com is the place for you!  I put in some data to make this beautiful demonstration chart and it took me all of one minute to do so.  Check it out:



Graphing

Depending on your needs, you can create a pie chart, a line chart, a bar graph (as seen above) or an area chart (even in 3D!).  Chart Go even includes some helpful demo videos to get you started.  Here is an introduction to the site:





The website (chartgo.com) was developed by a guy who had been creating a bunch of charts for personal projects he was working on - he developed a web application to make his life simpler and eventually put the application on line for free.  It is recommended often by educators, probably because it is so easy to use and the charts look professional.

Scoop.it - What's your passion?

Are you passionate about something?  Have a favorite topic that you would like to get up-to-date information about but don't have to time to surf the web looking for the latest and greatest content?  Want to connect with other people who are passionate about the same things that you are?  Scoop.it might be a great website for you to check out. Here's a little video about scoop.it that you can watch:
You can create a free scoop.it account and you become the curator of a magazine on your chosen topic. Scoop.it scours the web to find exciting, relevant content that you can "scoop" and add to your magazine. You can also connect with curators that have magazines that are focused on similar topics. I did a quick search for Biology Teaching content and found a magazine that appears to be curated by a college biology class. Here is a screen shot:

And here is the link: http://www.scoop.it/t/biology-class-101

There are scoop.it pages on tons of topics and more are being added every day. It would be a fun way for a class to keep up to date on current events and trends in your subject area if you're an educator.

Evernote - it's like your digital brain

Ever have a great meal and then a month later forget where you ate it?  Ever met somebody and see them a few months down the line and think to yourself, "That person looks familiar, but I have no idea where I know him/her from"?  Ever read a great article and then spend hours on google searching for it again only to turn up empty?  Well, Evernote (www.evernote.com) can be your digital memory banks.  You can store text documents, audio files, and pictures in one place, and all of those files are synced across all of your digital devices.  The best part is that you can organize Evernote in a way that makes sense to YOUR brain.  Plus, you can share your evernote files with other users.  Evernote can be used to keep track of delicious meals you cook or eat (Evernote Food), people you meet (Evernote Hello), or to plan a trip.

From an educational standpoint, you can use Evernote to organize your lesson plans and any cool videos/pictures that you come across to use in your powerpoints or on your class blog (with sources cited, of course).  You can also share this information with colleagues.  Evernote Hello sounds like a great tool to use to remember all of the people you will meet when you attend conferences, meetings, or staff development programs.  I have downloaded Evernote to my iPhone and plan to do a bit more exploring if I ever have spare time again.  :)

Brainflips - Make interactive flashcards for any subject!

I recently took the time to view and play around on www.brainflips.com. This is a website on which you can create decks of flashcards for any subject. There are also hundreds of decks that have already been created and are viewable by anybody.

While this site looks like a good idea in theory, I found some basic flaws. First of all, if you use the decks that have already been created, it is a wise idea to proofread them for errors. There is nothing worse than studying the wrong information! Second, creating these flashcards is very time consuming. Unless somebody is really computer savvy, I think that it will become frustrating before the learning curve is overcome. However, if students start on this website when they are young, it may just become part of their study habits. I currently teach Anatomy labs at the college level and I don't think that this site would be something that my students would use. I looked over some of the decks that would be pertinent to our class and found that they either had too much information or not enough information. Third, I could not find anyplace on the site to print the cards. They appear to only be available online.

On the plus side, it is great that these flashcards can be created online and accessed from anywhere. Students can view their flaschcards from their smart phones or any computer with internet access. Most students have consistent internet access, so this could work well. I think that a site that was specific to biology, with clipart or textbook photos, might work better for me in the future.

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Thinkfinity - Great Site for Education Professionals

This week, I explored Thinkfinity (www.thinkfinity.org) which is a Verizon sponsored website.  It is a free online community for education professionals, providing access to over 60,000 educators and experts in curriculum enhancement.  The site is an invaluable resource for teachers of all disciplines.  There are discussion boards, blogs, and even an area where you can look up lesson plans that are categorized according to state standards (probably my favorite part so far).

The part of the website where you can look up lessons by state standard is called Thinkfinity Resources and it is located about halfway down the home page on the right side.  There is a box underneath the heading and you can click on the tab that says "State Standards".  Input your state, grade level and subject and all of the standards will pop up with links to lesson plans that can be used to teach the specific standards.  This is a great tool for teachers, especially new teachers.  I wonder if you can upload any cool lesson plans that you develop or find.

I am definitely bookmarking this site!  It is going to really help me with the rest of the lesson plans that I have to develop this semester and after I am hired as a teacher.

Checking out ReadWriteThink.org!

This week, I had the opportunity to take a look at www.ReadWriteThink.org.  This website has a lot to offer to teachers and students.  I noticed that there were some fun activities for younger children, so I recruited my 5 year old daughter to help me out with my evaluation of the site.  She played three interactive games on the site and enjoyed two of them.  She is just learning to read, so I think that the third game was probably too advanced for her at this point in time.  However, the matching game (ABC Match) that she played kept her occupied for a good half hour.  It gave positive feedback when she got an answer correct and she really liked that.  Another game called Construct-A-Word was fun for her too - but she needed a lot of help from me to play.  The game that she was not fond of was called Word Family Sort and some of the words were long - she didn't have the patience to sound them out and she is not familiar with blended sounds yet so it was just too hard.  I bet she will enjoy that game in the future.

I also looked at the Lesson Plan section and saw some really neat lessons.  But, there were not many lessons that were geared towards high school biology, so I am not sure that this site is going to be a great resource for me in the future.  I will definitely keep it bookmarked for my daughter though.  There were some great things on there, like a Letter Generator (for business and personal letters) and a cool looking activity to conclude reading Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.  Fun stuff.

Puzzlemaker: Imagine the Possibilities

I recently checked out Puzzlemaker (found at http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/) which is a free puzzle generation tool for teachers, students, and parents.  It is really easy to use and you can make all different kinds of puzzles, including word searches, crosswords, and cryptograms.  There are also options to make mazes, number blocks, and something called fallen phrases.  I think that the majority of what can be created on here would be classified as "busy work" or "fillers".  However, it is a good idea to have this tool up the proverbial sleeve, since there are times in class when students have down time.  The puzzles that a teacher can create with this puzzlemaker could be a semi-constructive use of that downtime.  Alternatively, a teacher can have students use the puzzlemaker to create puzzles for their classmates.  I think that it might be fun to see what types of crossword clues the students would come up with or creative uses for some of the other types of puzzles that are available. 

The website is really easy to use...very user friendly.  I think that math teachers could really benefit from this site, especially at the lower grade levels where students are just beginning to work with multiple functions in math problems.  I also think that it would be a fun way to test students' knowledge after an introductory lesson - maybe used as an entrance or exit ticket?  Either way, if students are having fun with learning, they are going to achieve more and it will encourage them to learn new things.  Since I plan to teach high school, I would probably not use this particular site too much.  I will share this resource with my students though.

Fun with Wordle

I took a look at www.wordle.net this week and I love it!  I did have some technical difficulties at first - the version of Java on my computer was too old.  After a quick download, I was good to go and I started making my wordclouds.  Thankfully I did have the Java issue, because wordle directed me to their FAQ page to fix the problem.  On the FAQ page, I read a lot about how the wordles are formed.  I learned that the more times that a word is mentioned within the text on the Create page, the larger the word will appear in the wordle.  I also learned that if you insert a tilde (~) in between two words, wordle will keep those words together and insert a space where the tilde is located.  I also played around a lot with the fonts and shapes.  I started with a random list of biology related words, but then I went to google to find a biology blog and used the url to form this wordle:



I love the 'Owned' font and I used 'wild variation' under the color tab.  It looks like biology graffiti.

Even with the initial Java issue, the website was very user friendly.  I think that this could be usedby children in all grades - it would be a fun site to use for creating report covers or posters.  I can also see using this to create a word cloud to use on t-shirts (for a science club, for example).  It was also fun to see which word showed up the most on the blog that I used and that was easy to do by looking at the size of the words in the final wordle.  I am not sure that creating a wordle is going to help the students to learn or practice any particular skills, but it certainly will help to get them interested in the lesson.  That alone can help increase student achievement.

In trying to think about how this could be used in the classroom, I thought of one example that might be a fun experiment.  In another class I am taking this semester, the professor asked all of us to jot down three characteristics of an effective teacher.  If we all individually entered our answers into the wordle create page, the resulting word cloud would clearly show which characteristics were the most common between our lists.  I think that wordle could be used in classrooms in this way and it might be an eye-opening experience for the students.