Digital Diagrams

       In class we were required to make a digital diagram. I can't tell a lie this post won't be a happy one.

I DON'T LIKE DIGITAL DIAGRAMS!!

        I enjoyed the experience and learning how to create a digital diagram but I don't think this will be a tool I use in my classroom. I feel like digital diagrams are boring. We are blessed to live in a digital age and there are so many options to teach information. I just think a digital diagram doesn't do a good job of engaging the students. I think it is a good idea but I want the diagram to do more. For example if the digital diagram was to move like a Prezi and go from one point to the next then I think it would be super beneficial. Then students could interact with the board instead of just reading from bubble to bubble. I find diagrams to be intriguing to look at but I sometimes find them confusing. Although they are arranged in order I would like them better if they had an interactive focusing tool that brought you from one step to the next. Digital diagrams remind me of textbook pictures. You remember stumbling across those pictures thankful that it was taking up a half page of reading but do you remember learning anything from them? No. Remember looking at the diagram of a cell but you had to read a chapter then look at the picture then read the description again before you finally understood what the picture was trying to tell you. That is how I felt with these diagrams. It was a tease a picture that made you think it was a new way of learning information but really you are just reading words but with a distracting picture. I just feel like if you have the tools like an interactive whiteboard use that instead of a still diagram. Students will learn more when they can touch and move the diagram than from just looking at it. I might use the diagram as a resource for an activity I did in class to serve as a reminder. Maybe if we had gone over a big topic of the water cycle creating a diagram with key terms and pictures just to jog my students memory. Yet, I would never use a diagram as the main course of a lesson. 

Bellow is a screen shot of my digital diagram I created about the four main types of clouds. 

      Maybe you will enjoy digital diagrams more? I'd love to hear and see how you would use digital diagrams in your classroom! Share below your own ideas! 

Diagram Hater,

Abby