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| by
Clint
Dickson
,
Chris
Kohlhardt
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 Ratings
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| Reviewed: |
May 16, 2009 by Teacher Education |
| Overview: |
Gliffy is a design tool for creating and sharing ideas and visions. Users can work individually or collaboratively to develop floor plans, flowcharts, interface diagrams and more. Users are offered options of a free version or a for fee version. |
| Learning Goals: |
Create diagrams for depicting and analyzing ideas, networking, spacial and other structures and relationships |
| Target Student Population: |
Teacher education students, and k-12 students. |
| Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills: |
Ability to drag and drop and to insert and manipulate visual objects in a design. |
| Type of Material: |
Gliffy is a web-based interactive design tool. |
| Recommended Uses: |
Gliffy can be used for a wide variety of planning and analysis tasks. These tasks can be completed individually or collaboratively using the collaboration tools available in Gliffy. Some of the applications in teacher education might include designing technology integrated classroom floor plans, idea mapping, and designing procedural flows. |
| Technical Requirements: |
You need a web browser with Macromedia Flash 7 or better. |
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| Strengths: |
The site is well designed and easy to use as a diagram builder. The completed objects provide a graphic layout of ideas and plans that allow others to examine and analyze freely. Changes can be made quickly and easily to test new design aspects at any time. It is a good tool to use to collaboratively visualize and analyze concepts in many different applications. |
| Concerns: |
None |
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Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool |
Rating:    |
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| Strengths: |
Teacher education students can use Gliffy in a number of ways including classroom layouts, ergonomic layouts for technology centers, lesson concept maps and concept links to other areas of the curriculum, initial idea generation and organization as a foundation for writing or multimedia design projects, and teacher-student interaction plans. Any of these designs can created collaboratively and can be easily displayed and shared with others for review and analysis. |
| Concerns: |
None |
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Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty |
Rating:   |
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| Strengths: |
For students comfortable with jumping in, the drag and drop functions and standard shape draw functions are easy to use and create professional-looking designs quickly. For those who want more direction, the site offers tips and tutorials and a good variety of examples of what can be done with the program. The file structure for saving designs is well designed, making it easy to find and retrieve files quickly. It is equally easy to share designs on the web and to set up collaborative groups and to change the members of the groups as desired. |
| Concerns: |
The site asks for you to do the 30 day free trial and encourages purchasing the upgraded version. |
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| Other Issues and Comments: |
For students who have not gone beyond educational idea/concept generation software, this program offers many new options. Some students may require a gentle introduction and demonstration of the broader possibilities and their potential applications in educational environments. |
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