EdTech Thursday
Every Thursday I highlight a web 2.0 tool to use with your class.
Over the next couple of weeks I thought I would talk about a couple of survey/graphing tools I think would be really neat to use with the class.
One tool I really like is Rich Chart Live (http://www.richchartlive.com/). It is a great way for students or yourself to create graphs and publish them. The graphics are rich, colourful and completely customizable. You have control of all the settings including the type of template you want to use, your data entry, the style of the data collection, and layout. It can even be animated. When you are ready to publish, you can publish the information as a flash file or you can place it into a powerpoint or blog or print it off as a web page document. Now, you’re probably thinking, “All this and it’s free?” Well, there are a few caveats. None huge though. The one thing is that if you are not purchasing their services, they will place a small logo on the graph, which is hardly anything at all. The other issue may be the fact that they use ads on the site. I’ve never had a problem with the ads but you never know what may come up and where students might click. So, you may find that these are enough not to use the site or not. I think that with any site, students need to be taught that their movements are being tracked and that if they are going to be clicking on inappropriate links than their privileges may be taken away.
Here is a sample:
How do we use it in the classroom?
Well, for elementary it might be hard unless you do it as a whole class project. After awhile though, they would probably get the hang of it (Grade 3 and up). I used to have students use the Microsoft wizard to make graphs and they seemed to catch on after awhile though they just used the basics of it. This might be a little too much though as there are so many choices. I think it would be an excellent tool for a whole class project and the results could be posted on the class blog. It could also be used in conjunction with a smartboard.
For higher grades, students could complete surveys and graph them posting the results to their blog or incorporating them into powerpoint presentations. Last year, I had a class of Grade 3’s graph heights of famous buildings to create powerpoint presentations as part of their building unit.
Graphs for blogs could also highlight results of questions you may have asked parents thereby communicating decisions to parents.
Let’s have a conversation!
How could this resource be used in your classroom?
