One of my favorite tools for students to explore ideas and build a shared understanding, especially students separated by large distances, is to build a collaborative concept map. Although far from a comprehensive list, I’d like to highlight 2 tools that have served me well in the past, albeit in very different ways.

Gliffy:
http://www.gliffy.com

For lack of a better definition, Gliffy is what you get when you cross a concept mapper with a wiki. Multiple students are able to access one map and do so when it suits them. Every change is recorded, just like a wiki, so there’s no danger of one student destroying another’s work. Gliffy supports images, sending your maps to a blog, flowcharting, network mapping, connecting words, and more. Best of all it’s free for a personal account.

IMHC CMap tools:
http://cmap.ihmc.us

This is without a doubt one of the most powerful visualization tools that I’ve ever used. On the surface, CMap Tools is a concept mapping tool that encourages the use of linking words to join ideas together. It has the ability to extract phrases from these joined ideas that can be exported to a word processor. Maps can be used to generate presentations where the nodes of the map appear in a prearranged pattern. This can be useful for both teacher and student presentations.

The real power of CMap Tools becomes evident when you join it to a CMap Server. You can do this one of two ways,

  1. Connect your CMapTools to one of the public servers preloaded into it’s directory.
  2. Download and host your own server available to educational institutions for free download.

Once connected to a CMap Server students can build a map collaboratively in real time! As a student adds or links a node they see other nodes appear to create, move, and join on their own as classmates add content. A chat window lets the students discuss additions as though they were working face to face.

My students have used these tools to brainstorm ideas for a project, summarize readings, and synthesize a unit. I’d love to hear what strategies/tools you’ve used to help students collaborate and build shared understanding.