Post #5

Graphic Organizers

Hi again, everyone! To begin this week's post, I'd like to share the three graphic organizers I made this week and briefly go over my experiences with them. Finally, I'll consider how GOs can be used in my own classroom and what concerns I have.

Inspiration

My first GO was made using Inspiration. After considering what sort of topics would be appropriate in my classroom, I decided on creating a research paper outline that my students could edit or recreate. A major pro of Inspiration is its rich library of templates and examples. I edited a template to create this GO, which really streamlined the process. Outside of templates, however, the program is a little feature-rich and takes quite a bit of learning to navigate. Additionally, because I am limited to free programs in my classroom Inspiration would not be my first choice.

Google Draw

For my Google Draw GO, I decided to recreate the rhetorical triangle. This is a diagram that I draw often on the board during class time, so I'm actually quite happy with having an actual online version of it to share with my students. In fact, I think I'll be sharing this on my class Canvas page this fall. 

The Google Draw program, like Inspiration, has a bit of a learning curve. However, the tutorial we watched this week is brief and straightforward enough that I'd be comfortable letting my students loose on Google Draw after watching it. Of the three options we used in our assignments for the week, Google Draw is also the only 100% free option.

Popplet

In creating this small map of my fall course curriculum, I decided to use the Popplet mobile app rather than the web app. In doing so, I found Popplet to be the most user-friendly and intuitive GO program out of the three we used this week by far. Because of the built-in tutorial, a student could make a Popplet without any outside instruction on how the program works. However, Popplets are limited to a sort of circle-and-line sort of structure. Although this is particularly useful for organizing facts around a topic, it does severely limit what types of GOs can be created using the Popplet platform. Additionally, Popplet is not a free program. Although the free lite version does seem to be pretty easily usable in the classroom, it is still pretty low on features and therefore can be used in a limited number of assignments.

Conclusions

Creating digital GOs was a pretty fun experience. Although in some cases (particularly in the case of Inspiration), I felt that it took a lot steeper a learning curve and more effort than creating a GO with a pencil and paper, overall they end up looking professional and clean.

 I found Popplet to be the most relevant in my classroom because during the third project I assign, students are to make "worknets" that explore different aspects of potential source articles. Popplet is the perfect program for doing so since each worknet organizes thoughts around a single article and needs to be saved as an image file. My only concern with assigning a Popplet is that some students will accidentally end up getting the premium version rather than the lite one (AKA wasting at least $5), so I'd have to emphasize to my class that spending money is not required.  If I do end up utilizing any other GO program in my classroom, I worry about how long teaching the ins and outs of the program will take before my students can actually dig in to creating their own GO.