Thing #20 - Visual Learning

 Gliffy is a useful tool for constructing a variety of graphic organizers, diagrams, flow charts, and even floor plans. Although Gliffy may be used for free, there is a small monthly fee for the premium account. The free version is helpful but does not allow you to save your work for further editing at a later time. Below is a screen shot of a flow chart on the scientific method that I put together using the free version of Gliffy. I could use Gliffy with my students by having them make a diagram such as a family tree or for putting together a plan for a model or project.

 Bubbl.us is a useful web-based tool that allows students to easily brainstorm, connect ideas, and organize their thoughts. This tool will be helpful as a planning tool before students begin writing papers, construct posters, prepare speeches, design presentations, or work on any other project that requires an organized plan to be successful.

Wordle is a useful tool for quickly putting together a word cloud of important words from an article, paragraph, book, or lesson. This is an excellent resource for teachers and students to highlight, learn, or review vocabulary. This tool is so easy to use and allows for tremendous variety in the appearance of your word cloud. Below is word cloud that was made using the words from this paragraph.

 Tagxedo is another very useful tool for putting together a word cloud. Tagxedo includes some additional features compared to Wordle since it allows you to arrange the words in the form of a picture and and then the words can be picked out from the picture. This allows the word cloud to be used interactively with students. For example, a set of vocabulary words could be put into the Tagxedo and then students could pull out the correct word when a definition or description is given to them. Furthermore, these word pictures could be printed to be displayed or to be used as a helpful study tool.

Content Standards:

Aligned to NETS-T: 1.a, 1.b, 2.a, 2.b, 2.c, 3.a, 3.b, 3.c, 3.d, 4.b, 5.a, 5.c

Connections to Marzano Strategies: Questions, Cues and Advance Organizers; Non-Linguistic Representations