Maine blogger, teacher, and web explorer, Cheryl Oates, brought to my attention this morning a new web 2 application, Gliffy. You sign up for free (pro version on the way) then draw or assemble flow charts, floor plans, and other graphical communications — and do so in collaboration. You can publish your projects as an image file on the web, so that it can be displayed easily through your blog or web page (see below). You can also add e-mail addresses of your collaborators, inviting them to come in and edit and improve your creation — graphic wiki?
The diagram below took me about ten minutes to construct, just feeling my way into the application. Very cool.
Imagine your science or history class constructing a visual outline slash diagram of your current unit of study, and collaboration.
Very very cool. I really don’t know how Cheryl does it. This is one I will definately use for planning. I find it so great to blend this type of thing into blogging and Moodlling. Just so much to use.
Thanks for the lead! I have now set one up to see if my latest chemistry class can use it to produce a collective mind map of the topic they have just completed!
Yeah, Mark Berthelemy http://www.berthelemy-family.org.uk/blogs/index.php?blog=5
introduced me to this one – he’s another one of these people who always seems to have his finger on the pulse. It’s like Visio for dispersed teams, without the need to purchase the software. Well cool. It’s great for learning design, too.
Great tool! We use a commercial software at school, this will allow my students the ability to work on a project in class and access it at home without having to install software. Thanks!
David,
You have been finding some great things on the web recently. I tried out Gliffy and think it is great.
Jim
I found an interesting idea along the same lines, mxGraph – http://www.jgraph.com/mxgraph.html. Certainly less polished currently, but it doesn\’t even need a flash plug-in. They also claim to have simultaneous editting of the same diagram working.