My ideals are bubbling over (part 1)

    Earlier this week I decided to surf the net to figure out what I should do my tech overview presentation on. I am still not sure but I have some wiggle room though. This semester has been funny because I have found myself jumping ahead of myself in terms of deadlines and almost forgetting the ones that are hovering over the horizon. Anyway, I've digressed here. 
    I stumbled upon this blog from an educator who had recently attended a professional development day. The blog is called Waffle Bytes (if anyone is curious). The entry was perfectly titled: Ten Technology Tools for the Secondary Classroom (posted: September 6, 2011). Some of the things found on this list are free and you don't need an account to use them. I found both of those "bytes" of information helpful and intriguing because everything online requires you to have a membership "account". I have only tried one tool thus far and have since fallen in love with it.
      The tool is called Bubbl and it is essentially a brainstorming/graphic organizer tool. Everyone remembers the prewriting step where we were all encouraged to make a web or chart our ideas  in some other way before we plunged into the draft phrase of our prose, right? Funny how that somewhat tedious step has since been abandoned during my years of high education. However, I have rediscovered it and I found myself having a ton of fun with this tool. I mapped out ideas for my art journals. Art journaling is a combination of art and writing which I have also discovered and felt the need to explore. Anyways, I love this tool because you have the choice to join or not. I think the basic account is three dollars or something but if I don't need to pay to use something I'm going to opt out of that. If you wanted to do fancy stuff with your web or brainstorm tool, (which ever you prefer) like encrypting/embedding it for a site or save it and come back to it, then you'd want an account. You can resize your font and change the color of the individual bubbles which helps in terms of clustering. You can connect bubbles or start an entirely new category. I think this will be beneficial for English, Science, and Social Studies. For Social Studies teachers can demonstrate the connection between people and places. They can demonstrate hierarchial orders in social classes that can be found throughout our history as well as present day. Science teachers can demontrate and cluster facts together or how things work in relation to themselves.
          I titled this post part one because I felt I'm not going to be finsihed with the possibilities of this tool anytime soon and I will want to use a future entry as a sort of bulletin board of my bubbls. Stay tuned.