Cacoo - For Drawing Diagrams & More

cacoo.com

A Creativity & Critical Thinking/Problem Solving Tool

Why do I need Cacoo?



https://voicethread.com/share/3210363/

Because you need a better way to create diagrams! Cacoo is a diagramming / chart creating draw tool with many options, pictures, templates, layouts, and more for creative, professional looking drawings.

To use Cacoo, you need a reliable internet connection and need to create a diagram.  It is helpful to have previously used a computer drawing program, even something as simple as the drawing options in Word or Powerpoint, so you know how to add boxes & text, but definitely not necessary.
To create a diagram, you need to create an account (more on that later), but before you even get started, the site has a nice tutorial link that provides a good overview of Cacoo’s capabilities. 

This overview shows you that Cacoo can make many sheets of diagrams using a library of shapes & easy link ups.

Multiple users can edit & follow the edits of the same sheet, and the diagrams can be saved as images or imbedded in blogs & wiki.

And while you are working on a diagram, a group can work on it all together in real time while chatting about the pictures.

So enough overview...using screenshots from Jing to step you through this (otherwise watching me create a diagram might take forever), let’s see if it’s really this simple…

1. To get started using Cacoo, first the user needs to create an account.  You can use a Twitter, Facebook, or Google account to login, eliminating the need to create MORE accounts & passwords:

2. Select “Diagrams” on the main page and you will enter the diagram creator, where one can create a diagram from scratch, or use a template:

Since we are new to this, I’ll just start with a template for now…have fun choosing just 1! 

I’m going to go with a basic flow diagram template

3. Next start editing your diagram. It works very similarly to paint & draw programs with auto-aligning of your boxes. Features in the window are easy to identify & use:

4. When you are done with your diagram, you have many options for saving and sharing. It can be exported into multiple formats (PNG only with the free version!):

 You can invite others to edit the diagram:

 And URL can be saved for imbedding into a blog:

I used the flowchart template and played with things, changing box features, adding connectors, arrows, a picture, and a different shape. You can see it here or click on the URL for it (https://cacoo.com/diagrams/JSR8iRObt1sJ9u2j):

Cacoo is a really nice tool for creating flowcharts!! It would have been much simpler to create this diagram (------>)   in Cacoo than using an older version of Powerpoint, because it is designed for just this purpose! (**topsecret info for my paper has been covered!**)

The tool can be used for concept mapping and mind mapping, great for having students explore concepts and work together, especially with the real time chat and edit features. Diagrams can be created to simulate equipment layouts, which would be helpful for creating teaching manuals. Flowcharts can be designed by students to outline process pathways. In design classes, students can create room layouts with furniture positioning.  Because the tool even includes figures and pictures, a user can create comics, greeting cards, and invitations.

Cacoo is really a drawing program with lots of extra templates, shapes, and extras that is setup to easily create balanced & well-aligned mappings, even when used for basic drawings.  Its’ format is quite user friendly, and really nice that the tool can be utilized online without need for downloading an application. The ability to have multiple editors who can work in real time together and follow their edits is really a powerful capability for this tool, especially compared to using traditional PC based drawing programs.  Creating up to 25 diagrams per year is free, and you can have up to 15 users per sheet.  The application recognized its’ utility for educational purposes (https://cacoo.com/academic), and gives educators an option to apply for the fully functional version for use until June 30, 2013, after which full use can be continued at ½ the price of the appropriate team version. 

If using the tool extensively, one may need to buy an upgraded version (https://cacoo.com/pricing) – a single user pays $4.95/month or $49/year, and more for multiple users with graded levels of cost. However, the pricetag comes with the upgrades including creating unlimited sheets, tracking diagram changes, and saving files as PDF, PPT, PS, & SVGs. There is also a “store” full of more complex templates and pictures that are for sale. 

On reviewing the tool and creating my very simple drawing, I really didn’t have any trouble using the tool, which was great! If you need to create a diagram for a paper, a work project, you want to map out some concepts, or design a new layout for your office furniture, give Cacoo a try!

Tagxedo: Creating Word Clouds

“Word cloud with styles”

www.tagxedo.com

A Creativity Tool

Tagxedo is a free web2.0 tool that allows one to create “word clouds” with a wide array of shapes, colors, and fonts styles. The end result is an artistic display of whatever you can display in words. The images created can be printed, saved to JPG, PNG, or IMG files, shared on Twitter and Facebook, linked directly to another URL, and printed at home. You can even send the image directly to zazzle.com and instantly create a t-shirt, mug, bag, and more with your word cloud on it.

To use Tagxedo, you really only need web access and words. You can add your own pictures for the clouds too, but they have so many options, that even if you aren’t feeling terribly creative, it’s already covered. To really personalize things, having a theme helps, but you can explore and design with their ready-made images.

Click here to learn how to use Tagxedo: http://screencast.com/t/MuuMQHVH

A completed design:

and the URL to the design: http://www.tagxedo.com/artful/70453287a95b4f5a

Using Tagxedo is an opportunity for endless creativity in a variety of different settings, and the site presents many links to lists of options for use, including a Tagxedo facebook page with examples and a blog with “101 Ways to Use Tagxedo.” In medical education, an instructor could use the tool to stimulate brainstorming with a visually appealing end result.  Topic exploration and learning may be facilitated with the end project being a word cloud of key words on the subject matter. One could create office artwork that teaches patients through visual and verbal representations of disease conditions. A caregiver could encourage the patient to create a word cloud that expresses their feelings, thereby imparting a therapeutic benefit to the tool.  Multiple images could be used together to compare/contrast or highlight positives/negatives of diseases and conditions. 

Stimulating creativity and providing outlets for artistic license is part of medical humanities, which is often overlooked in medical education. Implementing a tool like Tagxedo allows an educator to mix a little more imagination into routine learning, possibly providing a better foundation for recall and memorization for some students. Tagxedo is a great tool for this because it is free, easy to use, and creates art without the messiness of paper, glue, markers, and scissors.

While the tool is easy to use, there are limitations to just how useful it can really be. Word cloud are not well-organized and the words cannot be maintained in a certain order, so Tagxedo is certainly not a precise way to convey facts, figures, and information. Nonetheless, Tagxedo creates an impression, and when well thought out and presented, a lasting impression.

Scoop.it! - An Online Tool to Create Magazine-Style Topic Hubs from Online Sources

www.scoop.it

A Communication Tool

If you ever wanted a go-to source for sharing and reading the latest online articles on your favorite topics, Scoop.it! might be your new favorite Web2.0 tool.  Scoop.it! is a free, web-based tool that allows you to collect and share links to articles on your topics of interest in an electronic magazine format.  As the user, or ‘curator’ of your topics, you link topic-related articles (scoops) to add to you topic page, creating posts. The Scoop.it site can even do some of the work of finding scoops for you. As curator, you can enter specific search terms, and Scoop.it will use GoogleNews, Twitter, and other sites to find articles it suggests you may want to scoop for your topic pages.

Scoop.it promotes a user community allowing curators to follow other topic pages, add comments and ‘likes’ to other scoops, and ‘scoop’ articles from different topics pages to add to your own pages. Scoop.it! lets you promote your own page by linking your topic pages to Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. Using the free-version, curators may work on up to 5 topic pages per monhts, with an unlimited number of posts per topic. Beyond that, Scoop.it! charges a monthly service fee: $12.99/month for 10 topics. There is even a business version if you want to really personalize your topics.

For educators, Scoop.it offers a discounted rate of $6.99/month for 20 topics and allows up to 30 co-curators per topic, making it a fairly education-friendly tool. 

To get started using Scoop.it!, the site provides fairly detailed information and many suggestions for creating a successful topic page.  First and foremost, you should have a fairly specific topic idea in mind, for example, “education” is probably too broad, whereas “Web2.0 tools for graduate medical education” really hones in your interest area.  The site promotes a sense of being an area expert; however you really just need a strong interest area and a knack for searching the internet.

When you create your topic pages, Scoop.it! is very interactive, walking you right through it.

1.   First, you choose your topic:

2.   Then you add a description to better describe your topic page and add in keywords so Scoop.it! can provide scoop suggestions:

3.   Next, you add a “Bookmarklet” to your browser so that you can “scoop” any webpage your are looking at:

4.   And you’re ready to start scooping and curating your topic page:

5.   When you start selecting articles to post under your topic page, you can edit the information you provide about your posts, and as you are getting started, Scoop.it! continues to offer tips to keep moving through set-up:

6.   Once you have your topic page up and running, exploring the pages of others becomes even more engaging. You can search for other topics:

Choose others to follow: 

Offer up commentary on posts and respond to your own comments:

7.   When you want to keep others updated on your latest posts or share you page, Scoop.it! makes it easy to share through many social networking sites:

Creating a site was easy!  You can see mine here:

www.scoop.it/t/web2-0-for-modern-medical-education

Scoop.it! is a format that provides a user-friendly, entertaining means to creating an online classroom.  The magazine format provides an updated, more interactive approach for providing online resources. An instructor can create topic pages for their students, providing posts about subject matter, including reading material and additional resources. By maintaining a separate assignment blog, the instructor could scoop his own blog, providing postings with links for assignments.

In addition to obtaining homework assignments and resources from the Scoop.it! pages, students can complete assignments on their own topic pages. By following each others’ posts, the students and instructors maintain linkage to each other, allowing further discovery and sharing of new resources from their peers.  Making use of the commentary features, students can converse, critique, and further share through each others’ posts. 

By using the education version of the site, with use of up to 30 co-curators, group projects can readily be assigned. Students no longer need to work solely within their own topic pages. Topic pages could be collaborative efforts, and most dynamically, an entire class could manage a topic page together.

Using this pyramidal approach, it becomes easy to envision a class, even a solely online class, where students interact together to create their own educational resources and teaching tools.  For example, human anatomy could be taught this way.  In the course, the instructor would maintain the main topic page for overall human anatomy.  Students would divide into groups that cover major systems of the body, for example nervous, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, musculoskeletal, and integumentary systems. For their respective systems, small groups of students would each create topic pages, providing interesting posts about the system. For the most specific and detailed information, student could create writings from their own blogs or link to the interesting pages of others.  To help other students learn about their specific system, each group might write an assignment for the others groups and post it on their topic pages.  A separate assignment topic page could be maintained, or students could post comments with links to completed assignments. To provide an overall catalog of each system, the main course topic page would provide posts to each of the systems, thus the entire body system maintains a connection under the main page. 

For a sequential course series, creating e-classrooms within Scoop.it! would provide an electronic catalog of coursework.  For an instructor, the format is easy to reference for future courses as example work. As an online format, the ability to constantly post new information keeps knowledge fresh and up to date.

The advantages to using Scoop.it! as a teaching tool include that it is free/low-cost and easy to use. Especially with using the education version, the ability to incorporate group collaboration and promote teamwork is pretty amazing.  Disadvantages of the tool include reliance on web-based information for creating your tools because not every source online is a good source.  Additionally, in using the program, I had some glitches with a very slightly outdated web browser (Explorer 7), and in trying to use the program at work where we have very high security settings, the program was repeatedly recognized as “entertainment” so I had to verify it everytime I opened the site.  Overall, these were pretty minor glitches to work around and I really enjoyed using Scoop.it!