Text 2 Mind Map

Text 2 Mind Map

 

Text 2 Mind Map is a free outlining tool that allows students and teachers to customize a mind map with colors, fonts, lines and even layouts. 

 

Mind Maps can be downloaded, saved as a PDF and even printed. Since you are generating the Mind Map by inputting your data/information, there is no copyright restrictions against adding them to your web pages, class notes, etc.

If you can type an outline, your can create a Mind Map:

 

As you can see below, Mind Maps can even be content heavy:

  As always, for more information on this Web 2.0 Tool and other 

resources, please visit with your campus librarian. Happy Mapping.

Infographics

Infographics are visual representations of data.

In the olden days, creating an infographic required a great amount of design skill. But with the wonderful Web 2.0 world, it's as easy as clicking on a few choices and entering your data.

(Graphic from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dashburst/8448339735/)

Think of all the possibilities for student projects - timelines, graphs representing scientific data, venn diagrams for character comparisions, annotated historical maps, math comparisons of data.

A few sites that help you create infographics:

Infogr.am
Infogram allows you to add more than 30 different types of charts, includes the option to import data from spreadsheets and other files and the final product can be downloaded, embedded in your website and shared with other viewers.

Piktochart
Piktochart has ready to use themes that can be customized for your needs.  It has easy to use drag and drop functions, interactive charts and high resolution graphics.

Visually
Visually gives you templates that you can customize.  It will pull data from a social media network, including specific hashtags, and create a story.

Dipity
Dipity is primarily a timeline product. You can show the progress of events over a period of time.

Easelly
Easelly lets you create charts easily (easelly?) by clicking and moving your mouse.


For more information about infographics::
10 Fun Tools to Easily Make Your Own Infographics
10 of the Best Tools for Creating Infographics
10 Awesome Free Tools to Make Infographics

To see some great examples of infographics:
40 Useful and Creative Infographics
10 of My Favorite Infographics

Here's an infographic I created about a typical day in the ECISD Libraries created using info.gram.

A Day in the Library | Create infographics

Check out this tutorial for making an infographic using easel.ly and info.gram:

Creating infographics | screencast tutorial from School Library Journal on Vimeo.

Wordle

Wordle

Wordle has been around for some time, but is still a  valuable Web 2.0 tool.

From Wordle: "Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends."

Anyone can copy text into the Wordle Site and create a word cloud. Here is one of the                    ECISD Mission Statement:

 

Words that are considrered "common" (the, a, is, etc..) are automatically deleted from the Wordle.

For the classroom, a Wordle can be used to help students actualize on a dramatic scale how they use words in their writing. Here is an example of W.H. Auden's Poem, "Funeral Blues":

 Please visit your campus librarian for more information on Wordles or other Web 2.0 Tools.

 

 

Quietube

Quietube - Video without the distractions

Showing a YouTube video to your classes and want to get rid of the ads, suggested videos and inappropriate comments? Want to share a video with your students?

Check out Quietube.

Quietube will take an online video and remove the extra information on the page.

You can change the background to black or white. You can also get a short URL that directs students to the simplified page.

Quietube currently works on YouTube, Viddler, and Vimeo with more supported sites to come.

Quietube works through a bookmarklet.  A bookmarklet is a small computer script.  You drag it to your bookmark toolbar in your web browser.  When you find the video you want, you click on the bookmarklet and Quietube does the rest.

A similar site is SafeShare.

If you would like to share only selected clips of YouTube videos, check out TubeChop and Splicd.

Voki.com

Voki.com

"Create and Customize a Speaking Character to express yourself, communicate and interact with your friends."

We could go a step further and add "for teachers to communicate and interact with their students and students with their teachers".

Click the ARROW on the lower left to play the Voki.

Click the link below if you are reading this from an email message. 
The Voki will play in a new window.
http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=7434335&height=267&width=200

Some ideas for the classroom: reciting student created poetry, restating the steps taken during an activity/experiment, tell a story from the point of view of a book character or person from history. The list can go on and on.

Voki Lesson Plan Database can be found at http://www.voki.com/lesson_plans.php

or in the Teacher Forum at http://forums.voki.com/forums/list.page

While Voki.com does offer a paid version, almost all lessons and activities can be done using the free version. Students in grades 8-12 should have no issues using their school Gmail account to create their own Voki account.