Thing Fourteen: Going With The Flow

For this thing I was to explore flowcharts and mind maps that are available online to use. The first one I used was a mind map from https://bubbl.us/. I had some trouble typing in the information and it does not allow you to change the format of the map. (At least I couldn’t figure it out but that’s not saying much, I’m far from being computer savvy!)I do think this could be useful in the classroom when going over vocabulary words.

For my flowchart I went to http://flowchart.com. You have to request an invite to use the sight but mine came within a few hours of making the request. I like that it had designs to choose from for creating a flowchart such as a diagram, a layout for notes, family tree, vertical timeline, etc. For my chart I picked the swimlanes layout because it reminded me of writing paper. At first I thought I was going to like the sight but it was very difficult to use. Because the swimlanes layout looked like writing paper I wanted to write a few simple sentences. I thought that this would be useful to use on a smartboard as an interactive activity for students but it was very difficult to go back and edit anything already typed. I also noticed that the site had a record button at the top but the sight has no instructions (that I found) as to how it operates or how to view the video clips you made of your document. I browsed through some of the other flowchart layouts available and found them to be even more difficult to use. Most of them already had sample information laid out for you, but it would not allow you to type in the boxes already made though. This made it a mess to deal with. As you can tell I was not happy with the website. Maybe if it had more information as to how to use their website but they did not, and even if they did it was not easy to locate (because I still have not found it) and I do not have the time to dedicate to find the information.

The disappointment of the last sight left me aggravated and determined to find a better sight so I checked out another flowchart website called Gliffy. Ahhh.. It was such a relief to find this sight. It is by far the best! It was easy to use and allowed you to create a chart from scratch exactly how you want it. I decided to make an example of a brainstorm a class might have when introducing the topic of weather. This sight had a lot to offer though so the options are really endless here. It even had the swimlanes layout that the previous sight had. I did not care for them as much on this sight but hey at least it was user friendly! 

(Still wish they were all more stylish, will be looking through fellow blogs to see what they find!)

Any~who check out my flowchart: And here it is!