I have been using bubbl.us as a prefered mindmapping tool with students for a while now because it is so simple to use. Students don’t have to sign in and a 30 second demonstration can have the students off and running. I find this to be a fairly common feature of web based apps – they are designed to be very intuitive and simple to use. Students also seem to like the visual design and the way the bubbles explode when you delete them. Funny how the small things can make such a difference. The students actually want to understand the work so they can create more bubbles and join them together etc which was an unplanned benefit of using computer over paper. The fact they can make mistakes and fix them and produce a nice looking product at the end encourages them to experiment as they go and not worry too much about making mistakes which I quite like also.
I have included a quick video showing a few of the features and how it works and have attached a link to some of the students work. I uploaded their mindmaps to flickr and the next step will be for the students to go in and critique the mind maps using some of the features on flickr that allow students to comment on the images.
Some ramblings about how much time we get with our students:
Time spent in PE lessons per fortnight = 1 hr 40mins
Time in PDH classes each fortnight = 2hrs 30 mins
Time watching t.v/using computer each fortnight = 28+ hours
This convinces me of a few things.
1. We really do need more time to be effective and cover the vast amount of important content prescribed in the syllabus. Also, the little time we have with students has to be used productively.
2. Students must learn to be critical consumers of information from television, the internet and the mainstream media. If we don’t want our kids to learn the ways of the world by Paris Hilton and co. then we need to equip them with the tools to deconstruct the messages they get and interpret them for themselves.
3. We need to be realistic about how much we can cover in our classes and the depth which we can cover this in. The times listed above are without interuptions and we certainly have plenty of those which cut down further on how much time we have with our students.
To make sense of this I find that figuring out what the messages I want them to leave my class with for each lesson (and year) helps to make sure I use the time I have to get across the key messages intended by the subject. Could sure use some more time though!!Technorati Tags: PDHPE
I came across this handy little application which is essentially a nutritional analysis tool. It has over 7000 foods that are loaded into it and you simply enter what you eat on a given day and it gives you a nutritional analysis, including for vitamins and minerals and the ratio of carbohydrates, fat and protein.
You can do this each day to develop a food diary and this could be a great little tool to use with our students when looking at nutrition to see how nutritionally sound their diets are. While it is American based this should not be too hard to use and make relevant for us here in Australia.
