Popplet Collaborative Online Mindmapping

One of the many Apps I've learnt about at the recent Slide2Learn conference in Melbourne, was the Popplet App.
The great thing about this App is that it's also a website accessible by non-apple technology.

What is Popplet and what can it do?

Popplet is simple to use mind mapping software that allows you to create follow charts and brainstorms collaboratively online. 

Popplets can include text, drawing and images which makes it a great collaborative tool which can be used in so many different ways.

You can share your Popplets with selected people and work on them together in real time (at the same time.)

Popplet shows who created each box which allows for greater idea ownership and accountability. 

There are various options to edit and customize your Popplet mind map. 

Each Popplet box can be connected or float separately allowing your students to create their own smaller mind maps within a larger Popplet. You can zoom in an out to work on different sections. This means that your mind map can grow to be quite large and still be fully functional. You will need to consider size in terms of how you ultimately share or use your Popplet though. For example, if you intend to print it, you wont want it to get so big that the boxes and text are too tiny to be seen clearly once printed.

How do you setup Popplet?

Each user needs to have an account and that requires an email address. I already have gmail accounts setup for my students. They use these for google docs and other programs. I have them locked down pretty tight and incoming emails divert to my own gmail account.

Rather than signing up each student account individually, I signed myself up, created my first Popplet and then invited each of the accounts. In doing so, the Popplet webpage asks for their email address and name (make sure you put the name in correctly because you can't change this afterwards and neither, it would seem, can they). Popplet then creates their account and emails them the password. For my gmail setup, I got these emails and then logged in for the first time.

When you (or they) login for the first time, you want to go to the account tab in the top right corner and reset the password to your preferred password. To reduce passwords I have a generic password for all the student accounts as these are not individually owned by the kids but rather shared. I hand out little cards at the start of a lesson and that is the account they will use for that day. The following lesson they may have a different account. This discourages them from using these email addresses to set up personal things or send personal emails. 

Important - You also want to change the activity settings to "none" on your student accounts or, if their accounts divert to your own email, you'll receive multiple copies of each Popplet newsletter or other announcement.

Each time you create a new Popplet, you need to go to the share option, at the top right of the Popplet, and invite the relevant students/accounts. They can then see the new Popplet in their list on the main login screen and you can collaborate away.

What then?

Once you've finished your Popplet, you can export it to twitter, Facebook, PDF, JPEG (picture file), you can link to it, or share it publicly with a URL. That gives you heaps of ways to get the kids learning out there. You (and they) will be able to share it on a blog, save it to their online portfolios, email to someone or print it and stick it on the wall.

So....

One guess what my kids will be doing first week back! I'll keep you posted as to the results.

Till then, Happy Poppleting.