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I absolutely love Popplet! My students and I will be using
it on a weekly basis to create anchor charts, organize thoughts, assess
understanding or help students create connections of concepts.
What is Popplet? (directly from their website) "In the
classroom and at home, students use Popplet for learning. Used as a mind-map,
Popplet helps students think and learn visually. Students can capture facts,
thoughts, and images and learn to create relationships between them."
What I did for a Tech Infused Lesson:
While discussing force with my 5th graders I wanted to them
to organize their thoughts during the week, in order to Tech Up my lesson
decided that my students were going to use Popplet to be the medium through
which students would organize and developed their thoughts.
Since it was my first time using Popplet as a class I didn't
want to purchase the Group Subscription because I wasn't sure how it was all
going to work out. What I ended up doing was creating 11 (you read correctly...
11!!) different Gmail school accounts and Popplet accounts so that each student
could save their work. If you remember from above... I would highly
recommending looking into Popplet Groups.
I checked out the netbook cart from our Media Center for the
week since this was going to be an ongoing lesson. I walked students through
signing on (after the first 2 days they got the hang of it!). On Monday I
started my lesson by explaining what force is and the students independently
watched a Brain Pop Jr. video about force. Then we went through together and
listed the 5 kinds of force that we were going to discuss for the week
(magnetism, push, pull, gravity, friction). Each day we focused on a specific
kind of force and added definitions, examples and pictures (from Flickr) to our
Popplets. On Friday I took the students to the computer lab and we printed our
Popplets and they glued them in their science journals.
Student Samples:
Lesson Reflection:
I thought the lesson went pretty smoothly and students
really enjoyed creating their Popplets. I wish I would have had students
collaborate on Popplets so that they didn't take as much time to create and
then they could have taught each other from their one Popplet. Many students
gave examples that truly showed that they applied their academic vocabulary and
understood the content. I did not think ahead of time about modifying the
assignment for specific students but on the spot I was able to tell them my expectations
(Ex: I had a special education student that provided only pictures for
examples). In the future I would also like to provide students with a rubric
and have them proof read each others work.
A few random notes:
1. For the iPads/iPods: Popplet Lite App is what you have to
use due to flash... it works well but I personally prefer the website
2. I would highly recommend looking into Popplet Groups
3. Sometimes the pictures from Flickr can be inappropriate,
ahead of time be sure you have discussed digital citizenship and what to do if
you happen to be presented with inappropriate content
Do you know of any other mind map apps that are K-5th grade
friendly?
