29/10/2014
This morning we have presented further mindmap tools for teachers. They are a lot and most of them are available on the Internet and free, which means that there's no excuse for teachers to use them as much as they can. We have selected "Mindmup" and "LucidChart" that, unfortunately, aren't free.
Mindmup is a free mind mapping tool that can be used online, with Google Drive, and offline on your desktop. It works like most mind mapping tools in that you can create a central idea and add child and sibling nodes all over a blank canvas (each nodes can contain text and links). You can save it to Google Drive, save it to your desktop, or publish it online. If you publish it online, you can grab an embed code for it to post it in a blog post or webpage.
Lucidchart offers a simple drag and drop interface for creating flow charts, organizational charts, mind maps, and other types of diagrams. To create with Lucidchart just select elements from the menus and drag them to the canvas. You can re-size any element and type text within elements on your chart. Arrows and connecting lines can be re-sized, repositioned, and labeled to bring clarity to your diagrams.
2/11/2014
Today we have been talking about interactive whiteboards, the new approach to futuristic teaching. An interactive whiteboard is a software created to be implemented in classrooms because it has a tactile screen (which is motivating, eye-catching and simple) and multiple option to develop teaching-learning activities. They are easy to use although when you get familiar to them first. All you need to carry on working with this tool is to have the specific projector, the screen, the software intalled and the stylus depending on the whiteboard (some of them can be used without stylus).
Thanks to interactive whiteboards, a wide world of activities and tasks is opened to us, we can work in a more visual way: handwriting, fill-in the gaps, drawings or matching activities. It makes students more motivated and interested and more complete and enjoyable activities.
