I stopped by the Google booth when I was at the ISTE Conference in San Antonio in June. I saw a demo of Lucidchart and put it on my long list of "tools to explore" list. It looked to me like a nice alternative to Inspiration, and it is integrated with Google Apps. Since it is free for educators, I was especially interested! Over the summer, I set up an account and viewed some video tutorials to help me get started (I found this webinar by Eric Curts to be the most helpful.) After creating a few graphic organizers with success, I decided that this would be a nice tool for staff in my district. Upon my recommendation, our Network Manager added it to our Google Apps for Education domain.To help get the word out about it, I facilitated a session at our annual ed tech conference, Spice it Up! (Aug 22, 2013) I now have several teachers who will be trying out Lucidchart with their students in the next few weeks. The interface is drag and drop. The teachers were excited to discover all the possibilities this app will offer. I think most participants liked the Google images integration and the mind mapping tool the best. A science teacher who attended wants to use it when she is teaching a unit about circuits. A math teacher intends to try out the floor plans tool when teaching geometry concepts. I've asked the teachers to let me know how it goes when using Lucidchart with students.
Lucidchart's support has been outstanding. When I needed help, Brad Hanks, a member of their support team, was there to help. He answered questions and offered support as I was planning my session. I even called him from my session with a question and he was happy to help!
Walled Lake staff, the Lucidchart extension needs to be added from the Chrome store. (Create > Connect More Apps > search for Lucidchart for Education. Add.). Then you can create a LucidChart diagram right from Google Drive. See handout here.
This is a tool worth exploring!
No comments:
Post a Comment