bubbl.us or 'boggl.us?' Module 6

Ok - lets make this quite clear in the intro - yes- I skipped over modules 4 and 5 so I could use bubbl.us application sooner rather then later with my trusty year 9 recipients aka year 9 guinea pigs. (and yes, I do intend to go back and complete the modules so I can continue to share my e-learning adventures with you - my followers.... )

Well, I gave bubbl.us a go at home. ( it's a mind-mapping application) I thought I might map out all the options for my morning prior to 8am. With this in mind I signed in, created my parent bubble and wow the number of child offspring was truly amazing. I am still awaiting the 'New Idea' editors phone call because really I should be more in demand then 'octo-mum'.

My 'child' bubbl. increased from 2 to 'way too many'. My options included - coffee, wake children and/or stop them from fighting and/ or watching t.v.(more sibling bubbl's here), organise breakfast, get them dressed, me too, make various lunches with (insert sibling bubbl.here- range of snack foods appropriate to the healthy food pyramid - quick there's protest- insert new child bubbl., pack school bags, library bags, sports bags, my bag, quickly throw in a load of washing, discuss with yia-yia what is for dinner tonight, tomorrow night, next week, next name day (if you have greek parents insert bubbl. for smile and head nodding)...phew...all this before 8am? So far bubbl.us = chaos

With another coffee and a clearer head I thought I would try it out on my year 9 geography class. The task: to bubbl.us a mind map on factors affecting community change. We started and they did great. They brainstormed many ideas and linked them to their community study. They were keen and made many bubbl's and loved blowing up the unnecessary ones - that little animation is truly attention grabbing. The boys were after email addresses to share their work with others and they loved the visual organisation of ideas. The downside comments from the boys was that they couldn't change font style and organise text as freely as in other applications. There was also a time-lag in saving work.

I would love to continue to say that the task was hiccup free but alas....
In the second lesson (yes we did need two) the boys attempted to upload their sheet and unfortunately this took 20 minutes - so much time the gloss wore off the new application and they demonstrated an obvious preference for 'flight simulator' then 'bubbl.us'.
So obviously new applications are great to use however remote servers and connectivity remains an issue for reliability and lesson coherence.

At this stage we changed tact and opened up a microsoft word document and inserted an organisational chart. The same result without the headache.
Stay tuned for comments on glogster!