A few weeks ago I came across Flowgram (a link shared via Twitter). On visiting the site and watching a few examples, I signed up for a test account for their beta version. About 10 days later, I decided I’d better have a go (I’d already received an email asking me how I was going with flowgram - good follow up from the flowgram site!) So, one friday afternoon I spent about 30 minutes choosing and ordering the links that I thought were worth sharing (I could have added so many more).
My flowgram saved on the fly and then I was ready to try adding sound. My work pc let me down ungracefully. Although flowgram was very good at leading me through the 3 steps to making sure I could record, the settings of my computer didn’t like the idea and Explorer had no option but to crash. Subsequent re-openings not only failed to allow me to add sound, but also had my flowgram in a state of non-appearance.
Another hour passed and I gave up and downloaded and installed the latest version of FireFox. Well, I’m afraid to say that Firefox couldn’t show me my flowgram either. So, I posted a quick bit of feedback to the creators to my problem and went home.
The following day, I opened Safari on my iMac at home. My flowgram was back and having followed the same 3 steps that my pc didn’t like, I could now record audio! I had a little play with the audio and decided that I needed to write a few notes to help get me through the audio recording without too many ums and arrs.
Meanwhile, the people at flowgram had sent me an email replying to my problem and also leaving a phone number I could ring them on for help. I have to admit, that the service they provided, given that it cost me nothing to sign up, was fantastic. However, calling the US from here was not really going to be an option for me.
Monday night, the kids are asleep and I’ve finally bitten the bullet and recorded my audio. There is no way I’m going to listen to it back (well, not for more than 10 seconds, anyway), so I hope it sounds okay.
The upshot of all this is to say, that I think flowgram could be a great Web2 tool for education, both as a teaching tool, but also for students to use as a presentation tool. as well as the web pages and sound, flowgram can also highlight text on a page and allow you to add notes - both of these I didn’t try.
Have a look/listen to my flowgram and check out the Flowgram web site for other examples.
