I am so excited to introduce Coggle as a Mind-mapping & Brainstorming tool at this year’s Northwest 5 Consortium Workshop! Coggle is an excellent cloud-based tool that allows students to “produce beautiful notes, quickly and easily.” Coggle allows students to share their work with peers and faculty to work collaboratively to improve ideas. Whether to take notes, organize ideas for an upcoming project, or brainstorm new ideas, Coggle could work for you this semester!

I have used Coggle extensively while in graduate school to summarize my learning from individual units, to collaborate with peers on group projects, and to share my thoughts on various topics. Below is a Coggle I created from a previous course:

 

Coggle shares several examples, including the Coggle below which outlines notes for Cell Chemistry using both words and images:

One of the biggest benefits of using Coggle over other mind-mapping and brainstorming tools is being able to share and collaborate on Coggles in real time. Coggle has a share feature that allows Coggles to be edited by peers, evening allowing editors to chat in real-time. Coggles can also be downloaded and shared as images and PDFs.

As with any third-party cloud based tools, there are FERPA considerations for asking students to use and create a Coggle account. Educational Technology suggests including the following information in your syllabus to ensure that all necessary information is shared and students have the opportunity to decline the create of an account (rare, but optional).

This course incorporates various online software and other technologies.  Some technologies require you to either create an account on an external site or develop assignment content using them.  The content, as well as your name/username or other personally identifying information may be publicly available as a result.  While the purpose of these assignments is to engage with technology as a means for representing the content we are covering in class, please see me for an alternative activity if you object to potentially sharing your account, name or other content you create in these technologies.

Our website includes additional information on FERPA and third-party cloud based tools.

There are several account options that offer different features for students, however I have personally used the free account for a couple of years and can highly recommend its capabilities for academic purposes.

Additional support and how-to guides are available on Coggle’s cleverly named blog, Bloggle. While it can take a few tries to get a hang of Coggle’s many features, especially the keyboard shortcuts, Coggle does grow to become extremely easy to use for a variety of purposes. Interested in using Coggle in your classroom? Contact your Educational Technologist for more information!