Thing 14

For this "thing" I created accounts in Gliffy and Bubbl.us. Flow charts can be great visual aids because they can easily show the cause and effect of things such as in history or reading lessons. They can also be used for several things in English or to describe a process. Gliffy had several other things to offer besides just flow charts. On the website, you can also create Venn diagrams, which I love! I could see myself using them a lot in my first grade classroom as a visual aid to compare and contrast things. I actually created one to prepare to record my podcast for comparing and contrasting folktales and fairy tales.

Mind maps are a little different. They aren't quite as easy to understand as a visual aid, they are more for the presenter or for brainstorming. I had never heard of mind maps before so I didn't know what they were, and after exploring Bubbl.us, I'm still not too sure! I couldn't see myself using mind maps for a classroom of first graders.

Thing 13

Exploring the web-based applications, Zoho Writer and Google Docs was very interesting to me because before, I wasn't aware that anything like that existed. I had always been familiar with using Microsoft Word because it is the most popular word processor, but I had never thought of there being anything like it online. These applications are great because they're free and they can be accessed by logging onto any computer. You can do pretty much anything on them that you can do with Microsoft Word, maybe even more. However, I didn't particularly like these applications compared to Microsoft Word, simply because I'm not as familiar with them. I noticed a few gliches in Zoho when I saved my document. They alignment would change after I saved it and it took me a while to get it back to how it was. Then when I saved it again, it would do the same thing! I also had trouble uploading it to my blog. I never figured out a solution to either of those problems after playing with it for quite a while. Of the two applications I liked Google Docs better because I didn't have to create a new account, since I already had a google account. I also thought Google Docs was just more user friendly.

C:\Users\Owner\Downloads\test_doc_1 (5).html

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zlI4tiVTqakO5P7E6G40PXUIRh7wZfxaDQCUhPqLn4A/edit?hl=en_US#

These applications could have several advantages in the classroom. Students could collaborate on projects easier with less emailing back and forth. Also, students could access documents, which they may have worked on during class, via internet instead of uploading things to flashdrives or having to purchase Microsoft Word.