On the heels of our PledgeCents partnership announcement, we are rolling out new features and enhancements that deliver a more robust and rich concept mapping experience for both teachers and students. These changes include concept mapping templates, additional open education resources, and improved search functionality.
To aid students in getting started, Ideaphora offers six templates for graphic organizing:
- Spider map
- Cause-and-effect
- Concept map
- Cycle map
- Compare and contract
- KWHL (Know-Wonder-How-Learned)
These templates can help students easily make connections among ideas and concepts presented in digital content. These templates can be accessed after logging in under the main pull-down menu. Once students choose a template that fits their needs, it will show up in the their mapping area as a background image to enable them to match the recommended visual organization of information. Students drag concepts derived from the content they are reading or watching on the left to the mapping area on the right and drop them directly on top of the template. The template can easily be removed at any time or locked into place.
Teachers can also use the templates to guide their lesson planning and instruction.
Additionally, Ideaphora now has more than 10,000 open education resources available in its online library that teachers and students can use in their maps. Enhancements to the online library make it easy to find the right resources. The granular search enables teachers and students to find resources by keyword, source type and collection as well as the exact point in the resource that the keyword is referenced, saving them from watching a full video or scrolling through numerous pages to determine if it’s the right content and to quickly locate the section they need. Once a resource is selected, users can add it to an existing map, create a new map with the resource, view the resource in the same screen to save time, or get more information. More than one resource can be used in a single map.
These improvements are available to current users and in subscriptions for individuals and classrooms. Learn more about our offerings and try Ideaphora Classroom with your students through our pilot program, or test it out yourself for free.
