Digital Graphic Organizers

First, I found the three graphic organizing software options I used to be vastly disparate in ease-of-use and overall aesthetic. From easiest to most challenging: Popplet, Inspiration, Google Draw. Popplet was my favorite, because it was very fast-moving and intuitive to navigate. However, there was no mechanism (that I could find) to delete a concept bubble once it was created. This hindered the editing and organizing phase of things, and created frustration near the end of my project. Inspiration was the second-best GO software I used, but I found its interface a bit more difficult to navigate, and the style and layout less attractive than Popplet or Google. Google Draw required more work than the other two programs, and the time it took to navigate between formatting tools seemed to defeat the purpose of what should be a quick organizational strategy.

When I hear the word, "brainstorm," I think of fast free-writing without time for second thought. For this reason I still struggle with the slowed down pace of digital GO's versus pencil and paper. Of course, for the purposes of planning a project or analyzing a plot, I'm sure students would benefit from a medium that requires a little bit more thoughtful planning. The digital way would also be beneficial if we were working on a class-wide project or decision. However, whenever the goal of a lesson is creative expression, I think I will stick with the Luddite way of mapping minds.