Get with the Flowgram

I’m co-teaching the Educational Games class again this semester.  As usual, Bernie amazes me.

When I took 670 in 2003, he was the only professor using Moodle.  I thumbed my nose at Blackboard and haven’t used it in any of my classes since. 

Until now.  

We’ve moved to 100% Blackboard and Wimba. Last year we brought Online and Campus students together for a synchronous session using Adobe Connect. I attended each classroom session and while Bernie lectured, I monitored the webcam and got participation from online students. 

I had done the same thing with a Project Management class 2 years earlier and it had worked brilliantly. But it didn’t work in this class because the content is so different.  PM was a class full of stories and concepts. Edgames is more experiential.  

Rather than a live lecture, he’s using flowgram, a free online presentation program that allows you to create a presentation using powerpoints, images, and the real kicker.. live web pages.  That means you can talk for 30 seconds to set up the course syllabus, then have students pause the lecture and read through the page without leaving the presentation.

We can give students an overview of a game, then let them play it until they’re ready to resume the lecture. How fun!

I’ll use it for a lecture soon, but for now I’m thinking of other ways to use it outside the classroom. Including helping clients review the sites I’m building for them. 

I say run don’t walk to flowgram.com and set up an account.  Or just go and view some of the examples on the front page, like Web 2.0 Writing Tools.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 10:39 am and is filed under EDTEC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Get with the Flowgram”

  1. Tony Says:
    September 9th, 2008 at 12:51 pm

    Hi Karl,
    Thanks for the kind words about Flowgram. We’re very excited about the potential for Flowgram in the educational arena. Please get in touch with us if you have any feedback, or ways that we can improve Flowgram for you and other educators. We’re all ears.

    Thanks again,
    Tony Lopez
    Team Flowgram
    http://www.flowgram.com/about_us/contact_us/email/

  2. kevin mace Says:
    October 9th, 2008 at 5:35 pm

    Know anything about Articulate Mr. Richter?
    I am going to use it for my client project for ED795A.
    Any suggestions to help ramp up my learning curve?
    I need to find a time to chat with you on some software of your choosing.

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