Thing 8: Collaborating, Connecting, Sharing

I decided to try Stormboard because I love collaborative brainstorming!  Working together in a relaxed group setting can produce the most wonderful variety of ideas.  This tool is very user friendly and pleasing to the eye.  It was very easy to create a stormboard and the introductory tutorial on slideshare made getting started easy.  A help box opened up with a friendly message and it was nice to know I could chat with  I love the fun colored sticky and the range of template styles to choose from.  I could definitely suggest that students use this to fire off ideas with each other.   I appreciate that 5 students can collaborate on one stormboard.  The wide range of templates can be applied to any subject area.  I would like to use it for the wonder phase of research.   However, I am concerned however because on the website the educator's accounts will only be free until July.  I would really like to understand more about what will happen in the fall when I try to use this with students.  This does seem like a really useful tool with a ton of great features.  

Similarly, Popplet is another cool way to collaborate and share ideas. The layout and style is user friendly and fun.  I like the concept map feel and how easy it was to naturally build off a central idea.  I really like the full screen option.  I found that when the address and tool bar are hidden they are less of a distraction. I like that you can export the popplets as a PDF and insert it into a presentation.  Popplets are a fun way to gather information and present information in a clean organized way.  I am not sure how high school students may react to the layout.  I fear that they might think it looks to juvenile, but they will have to be the ones to let me know.  I certainly want to share it with them and see what they think. 

I also checked out the 15 best google drive add-ons for education!  So cool.  I currently have been using the BibMe add-on and I think it's fantastic!   Two of the new add-ons that I really like and want to use right away are Mindmeister and Gliffy for more intriguing visuals in presentations.  Thesaurus and Open Clip Art would be good add-ons for every student and staff member I work with.  I look forward to sharing all of them with the students and staff during Tech Wednesdays.