Un-Boggle Your Mind With Coggle

Several months ago Richard Byrne of Free Technology for Teachers featured a mind-mapping tool, Coggle in a post on his blog.  Coggle is a free web 2.0 application released in January of this year.  There is no registration.  You sign up using a Google account.

Features noted on the home page include:

• real-time collaboration
• unlimited amount of images using a simple drag and drop method
• go into history mode to re-do previously made edits
• when collaborating you can see who did what  and
• for visual thinkers branch colors can be changed easily.

If you have a Google account select the big green button and you are good to go.  At the next screen click the green CREATE button.

In the upper-right hand corner of your work space are four icons representing from left to right, collaborators, download, view history and chat.  In the center of the screen, to begin choose the gray New Coggle space by mousing over it.  An arrow (+ sign) on either side will appear.  The arrows allow for the addition of branches in your mind map.  Click and type in the title of your Coggle. 

As you work helpful hints appear on the screen; keys to use to delete, undo, redo, etc.  The entire working area screen can be moved by dragging so you can focus on a particular section.  You can zoom in and out by using control + and control -.  You can also select the question mark icon in the lower left-hand corner for more assistance.

A branch can be dragged to a desired position.  A single click on a branch causes a color wheel to appear allowing for a change in shades.  For each branch that is added a plus sign appears allowing for "a child to be added to the parent" branch.  When you choose a branch name again, you are allowed to edit your text.

At any point you can choose the share (collaborators) icon to provide a link via Facebook or Twitter.   This allows anyone to see the work on your Coggle.  (Here is the link for my Coggle, Book A Day Challenge Summer 2013)  You can also add in readers and writers with their email addresses.

By choosing the download icon you can save your Coggle in PDF or PNG format.  Any hyperlinks added to your Coggle will be functioning in the PDF format.  Adding hyperlinks is easy.  In the text box type the name of the link surrounded in brackets followed by the URL surrounded in parenthesis.

When you select the view history icon a list of times appear.  Click on any to create a copy of your Coggle.  This allows you edit your work from that particular point.






To exit your Coggle simply close the browser link.  Your work in continuous saved.  If you are logged in Google as soon as you go to the Coggle home page your account information (list of your Coggles) will appear.

For more help Coggle has a blog (linked here).  The blog further explains specific features of the application.  There are many how-to narratives offering more sophistication to the look of your Coggle.  

When you desire to quickly collaborate, brainstorm, or make a list, this application is exactly what you need.  I can't begin to stress enough the ease of use.  I recommend putting Coggle in your virtual toolbox.  You, your students and your colleagues are going to really enjoy using this mind-mapping web 2.0 application.

Here is the image of my Coggle.

Here is the embedded PDF file.  I was able to embed the PDF file by uploading it into Scribd.  In Scribd when you click on Preview one of the available options is HTML code.

Book a Day Challenge Summer 2013 by Xenasmom

The Little List That Grows

As Education Librarian at Virginia Tech and former chair of the American Library Association Best Websites for Teaching and Learning committee, Heather Moorefield is frequently sending out alerts via Twitter about applications her followers might find useful.  Several months ago she tweeted about a simple but powerful organizational tool, which has been around for several years, but is new to me.  This tool makes use of a unique outlining technique for listing lists of lists.

Registration and use of Workflowy is free.  (You are allowed to add 500 items per month.) For users thirteen years and older all that is required is an email address and password.  As soon as you register an email is sent from the application creators about steps to take to begin use.  Within a few days more hints about features follow.  The instructions are concise and easy to understand.  As soon as you generate items on your list you will receive daily email updates. (You can unsubscribe if you desire.)

When you first log in, the blank screen can be a little intimidating (or liberating).  It is recommended that you first create several large categories.  Note that along the tool bar, the arrow in the upper right-hand corner (undo) is now highlighted as being an option once you've added categories.

When you mouse over a bullet point, a drop down menu appears. For your selected category you can add a note, chose complete, share with others, export, duplicate or delete it.  Added notes appear directly underneath the selected item.

If complete is chosen the item may disappear depending on your choice in the upper-right hand corner. (Completed: Hidden or Completed: Visible)  When you wish to share a particular portion of your list, another window pops up.  The two choices are to share with a link, either allowing editing or just viewing, or to send a private invitation via email with a required login.

If you decide to export, it can be formatted or in plain text; allowing for it to be copied and pasted into another document.  When you click on the bullet point next to a category to add items, it zooms you in to those specifics.

Click on the + sign to add to the list.  To continue adding points simply press the return key.  All items have the same options in the drop down menu as the larger categories and item order can be altered by simple dragging them to a new position. (Use the cross-like icon which appears.)

Here are separate views showing the zooming in feature.

If you want to expand the list to see all the items double click to open and double click to close.












If you wish to learn further details about other features on Workflowy click on the Help button in the upper right-hand corner.  There are a series of very informative short video clips which explain:

• Getting Started
• Tag & Filter
• Complete
• Share
• Zoom
• Edit
• Search
• Move
• Delete
• Duplicate
• Expand & Collapse
• Import & Export
• Indent
• Print
• Undo and 
• Settings.

Two features of particular interest are the ability to:  add tags grouping items from other lists together using the # symbol or the @ symbol to assign an item to a specific collaborator and search for items.

This is another of those applications that falls under the heading of so simple and easy to use, it's amazing.  I can see using this to plan month by month, week by week and day by day in the classroom.  It can be used with students who are working on projects together for storyboarding a presentation,  assigning tasks, or taking notes.  If you are working on a blog post, it can be used to organize your thoughts, list websites, videos and curriculum extras.  Workflowy is just what a list maker like myself needs.  Being able to zoom into a specific portion of your list without the distraction of all the other items is a huge bonus.  In your browser all you need to do is to open up the tab and forget about the paper pads and sticky notes.

Here is the link to one of my lists.

Care To Add Anything?

Even with all the new online applications designed as virtual post-it boards, for organizing schedules and to-do lists, I still find myself making lists with paper and pencil; grocery lists, lists of books I need to read yesterday, household tasks I can not put off any longer or a list of my lists.  During the month of December and even now, people are generating the best of 2012 lists, which as a reader I find invaluable.  There is no humanly possible way to read all the brilliant books written and illustrated in any given year.  I am still determined to read some from 2012 and even 2011.

As a lover of lists I was intrigued with a new web 2.0 application released on November 15, 2012 which was noted in a tweet by Heather Moorefield, Education Librarian at Virginia Tech and former chair of the American Library Association Best Websites for Teaching and Learning committee.  Listerd wants to revolutionize the world of lists.  Not only is this a location to generate lists but it is a platform designed for sharing, collaboration and the rating of items on any given list.

Upon accessing the home page users can visit the Blog to get the latest hints and updates, Discover lists grouped by Trending, Newest or All time plus search by category.  There are currently 21 categories;

• Animals & Nature
• Cars & Auto
• Fashion & Clothing
• Home & Family
• Music
• Religion
• Technology
• Arts & Design
• Education & Books
• Food & Drinks
• Games
• Politics
• Science
• Travel
• Business & Finance
• Entertainment
• Health & Fitness
• Local
• Relationships
• Sports and
• TV & Movies.

Continuing along the top you can Create new list, Sign up, Log in or conduct a keyword Search.  At the bottom another search is available, Browse.  In Browse you search by list title in alphabetical order.  

Listnerd is an online and mobile service free of charge.  Users must be 13 years old.  To use the site or register you must agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms.  

Whether you select Create new list or Sign up you are taken to a screen where you can use your Facebook or Twitter account to log in or create a non-social form of registration.  You provide a username, email address, password, birthday and country to register.  A welcome/confirmation email is sent immediately.

When registered you are taken to your profile page.  At this point you can view your created lists, added items, or votes cast, make and read posts to your wall, read your newsfeed (followers) and adjust your privacy settings.  On the right a running tally is available for your statistics, list of followers and those you follow.  

When you select Create new list another window opens illustrating a four step process in designing a list.  The first step (Basic Steps) asks you to:

• give your list a title
• enter in a description
• pick a category in which your list will be placed and
• choose whether your list will be public or private.

Who can vote (members only or everyone), voting system (1-10 rating scale, thumbs up or down and number of votes per user), who is allowed to add items to your list (everyone, everyone, with approval, only members can add, or members, with approval), and the time limit for voting (never-ending or at this date) are all parts of step two (Settings 'n stuff).  At any point you can go back to re-do your selections.

For step three (Styling 'n stuff) you can upload an image for the header and another for the individual list. There are several selections in step four (Advance stuff).  They are whether all items should have an image, description and URL link.  You can also add up to three custom fields for your list.

When you finalize all the steps your next screen profiles the created list with its title, description, stats and sharing abilities.  Beneath that section you begin to add items to the list.  For each added item you include a title, description, link or image depending on your settings.

When your list is completed it can be shared via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Reddit, LinkedIn, Tumblr or StumbleUpon.  Your entire list can be rated and comments can be left.  Each item can be rated by viewers according to their votes and edited or deleted by you.

Here is the link to my completed list titled Xena's Picks of the Litter-Top 20 Dog Books of 2012.  Items in a list can be expanded to see the description, links, etc by clicking on them.

Although I already had eleven views before I was even done, it remains to be seen how the sharing and collaboration of this list will evolve.  But I can state without reservation that I really like using Listnerd.  The developers have made it so easy to create and manipulate a list.  The potential for use in research resources, genre study, student generated favorite lists of books read, a Mock Caldecott or just about anything you can imagine make this an exciting tool for professional or personal use.  

Tools Of The Trade: Annotary

Believe it or not, research to me is akin to going on a treasure hunt.  Give me a topic and I get lost in another world.  One of the best things we can teach our students is to access, evaluate and organize information that best answers predetermined questions.  We not only want them to be independent learners and users of information but to be creative in their sharing and collaboration.  When confidence replaces frustration particularly on a subject of interest they might even have as much fun as I do.

Toward the end of November Heather Moorefield, education librarian at Virginia Tech and former chair of the American Association of School Librarians Best Websites for Teaching and Learning mentioned on Twitter an application that was launched in May 2012.  This free site offers users (13 years or older) the ability to bookmark pages, highlight portions of those pages, add notes and share with others.  Annotary bills themselves as: the best way to keep track of what you read. 

When opening to the home page across the top you can select Explore, About, Search, Login or Sign Up.  If you choose Explore you can look through Public Bookmark Feeds, Explore Collections, Explore Groups, a Random Collection or a Random User.  The About section explains the formation of the site and its developers.  A keyword can be typed into Search to check for previously created Annotary collections.

You can sign up using your Facebook account or by entering in a first and last name, email address, user name (which becomes your unique URL) and a password. As soon as this is completed a welcome email is sent and you are requested to add the Annotary toolbar browser extension to either Google Chrome, Firefox or Safari.  When the extension has been added your dashboard, homepage, opens.

There are two ways to begin: go to a web page and click on the Annotary button to open the toolbar or on the right-hand side of the screen click on the green Add New Bookmark button.  Before beginning please note that you can click on other buttons, Create Collection or Create Group found in the same section.  A running tally of collections, bookmarks, groups and people in your network is shown beneath these options.

If you click on the green Add New Bookmark button another window pops up asking you to add the web page URL, any notes and a collection name.  After a bookmark has been added to a created collection the collection page appears.  A collection can be edited, deleted, printed or shared. (An individual bookmark can also be edited, shared and sorted.)

When the Annotary button on the browser toolbar is clicked at a website the same options are available as well as creating a new collection.  On the side of the window are icons representing adding a bookmark, highlighting, sharing the highlighted page, seeing highlights of others and going to Annotary.  

A page must be bookmarked before it can be highlighted.  When a portion has been highlighted a small note pops up.  If you wish to delete a portion or all of the highlighted area a tiny trash can appears at the end of the highlighted section so this task can be accomplished.

When you go back to the collection any of the pages which have been highlighted will have a yellow line running down the left side.  When the Share button is selected you can share this collection via Facebook, Twitter, Google + and LinkedIn.  It can be sent to others using Gmail, Yahoo mail, Hotmail and AOL Mail.  A unique URL is created for each collection.


While I used this tool to simply gather websites about snow, snowflakes, Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley and the making of virtual snowflakes, I can see using it to not only collect resources for more specific projects (author or genre studies) but also to create an online scavenger hunt writing questions in the notes which can be answered using the highlighted text.  Here is the link to my collection titled Snow.


This web 2.0 application has all the features which make it advantageous for use; simplicity, ability to group similar pages in collections, highlighting of pertinent portions, the addition of notes and sharing are all pluses.  I recommend Annotary for use in gathering resources about any topic of interest for individual or group use.  Creating groups within your account allows for easy collaboration.