I just spent the day exploring Lucidspark, a collaborative whiteboard educators and students can use for many educational activities and assessments!
Lucidspark is brought to you by the folks at Lucid for Education, who have been supporters of education with their Lucidpress and Lucidchart products for many years.
The Lucidpress and Lucidchart tools have many templates available for teachers, a few of which you can see below. And, of course, you can edit the templates and start from scratch if you want!
However, Lucid for Education is now providing a product to target the interactive educational needs of schools and classrooms with Lucidspark. The ease-of-use, sharing, collaboration, and organizing in this product is so intuitive. I completed my explorations on an iPad but, of course, there is also a robust Web version that syncs perfectly across all devices.
Here is a quick overview video of Lucidspark created by Lucid for Education.You can find them on Twitter @LUCID4EDU.
THE TOOLS AND RESOURCES
When you first open up Lucidspark, you are presented with the ability to create a folder, start with a blank document, or pick a template. I decided to look at the templates that were offered specifically for education. You can see from the video below there are a ton!
I wanted to share a closer look at some of the templates.
MIND MAPS
CONCEPT MAPS
K-W-L CHARTS
TEAM BUILDING EXERCISES
CLASSIFICATION
PROJECT PLANNING
MEETINGS AND WORKSHOPS
STICKY NOTES (great for EdCamps, too!)
BLANK CANVAS
There is also a built-in timer and a built in vote/poll tool.
VOTING/POLL TOOL
TIMER TOOL
The toolbar is quite extensive and uses icons that are recognizable to users!
TOOLBAR
And you can see from the sharing window below, there are many choices and options for sharing the Lucidspark creation.
SHARING WINDOW
BUILT-IN-INSTRUCTION TEMPLATES
One of the very cool things I discovered was Lucidspark includs some templates with instructions and resources right in the template category where it is needed. Having the information close at hand, at point of need, made me feel secure I would become an expert in no time!
INTRO TO COLLABORATION INSTRUCTIONS
INSTRUCTIONS AND EXAMPLES
COLLABORATION INSTRUCTIONS
And there is even a train-the-trainer module!
HOW DO I SIGN UP?
Lucidspark has a free version that allows the creation and use of three collaborative boards, with the ability to collaborate and share in real-time, create shareable links, and download your boards. You can add emphasis by using emojis and freehand drawing, too. The free version integrates with Slack, Google Drive, and Microsoft Teams. Just go to their home page to sign up!
There are also more robust paid versions of Lucidspark available and options for integration with additional tools your schools may be using. That information may be found here.
So, sign up and spend some time with Lucidspark and try it out. I am sure you will come up with lots of creative ideas for its use! Share your cool findings with me on Twitter and follow me, too!
