Need to Graph Screen Time? Use Chartle!

Chartle has a short demonstration video on its home page.

In Why Ed Tech is Not Just for Teachers, I explained my enthusiasm for following educational technology blogs, news, and tweets.  Educational technology applications are well suited for families.  Many Web 2.0 tools can be used to track family spending, to create timelines or infographics preserving family events, or to share with your children while they are online which fosters the development media literacy skills.

One of the many Twitter users I follow in the category of Ed Tech is HP Teacher Experience Exchange—a free Web 2.0 professional development community for educators. And what are parents?  Educators! Recently HP Teacher Exchange tweeted a link to their tutorial on Chartle, a great Web 2.0 site that offers tools to easily create charts and graphs.

I like Chartle because it is very easy to use.  Once you arrive at the home page, click “Create” which takes you to an impressive and easy to use interface that displays the types of graphs you can choose to make. You can choose from: bar graphs, pie charts, line graphs, maps, plots, diagrams, and dynamic charts. Select the type you’d like to create and fill in the fields with the information you want your graph to display.  You can change the number of sections, colors, field directions, etc. 

Choosing Labels for Pie Chart

When you have your graph or chart completed, click “publish” which saves your creation to Chartle’s gallery.  There you can bookmark the link or copy the HTML code to embed your creation into your website.

Saving to Chartle's Gallery

So what can families do with Chartle?  Here’s some ideas:

Create a Pie Chart depicting how family members use their time. 

I created a colorful pie chart showing how I spend my time during a 24 hour period.  It is embedded  at the bottom of my site, Sperk*.  You can also find it via the link here:  My Daily Activities.  This is a great activity for kids who need support in time management.  (It also is a fun tool for math practice in the area of calculating percentages).  Once your child sees how he spends his time, he can work to spend less or more time where needed.  As he makes adjustments in his time management, he can create another pie chart.  Seeing the areas of the pie chart expand or decrease can be an exciting motivator.

 

Create a Bar Graph depicting screen time usage.

This is a great tool for families who have resolved to cut down on screen time in 2012.  Track each member of the family’s screen time, create a bar graph on Chartle, and email everyone in the home the link to the chart, or embed it into the family’s web page.  As screen time decreases, it is easy to create another chart based on the original by clicking “Create [ a new Chartle based on this one ].”  I created a fictional one based on a family of four that wants to track time spent watching television, using the computer, and playing Wii.  You can find it in Chartle's gallery here: Screen Time 

Create an O-Meter depicting amount of work completed for a project.

Teaching your child how to create an O-Meter for her school project may be just the thing to spark her enthusiasm in a less thank favorite subject.  I created one for a fictional science project.  I based it on a project containing five components: researching, essay writing, creating and inserting graphs/photos (which can be easily done with Chartle), composing reference page, and proof reading.  My O-Meter can be found in the Chartle gallery here: Science Project Completion Meter

Selecting Font Color for O-Meter

The O-Meter can also be used to track progress for a personal goal in a school fundraiser or for the amount of money needed to be saved for that new gaming device!

What are some other ways your family can use Chartle?