Coggle is a collaborative, web-based application that only works online. You can use it offline after you’ve created your material in a PDF or image. It is an excellent tool to foster learners’ visual organization, improve their shared knowledge construction and create non-linear summarization. The task I’ve proposed below asks students to use Coggle to summarize information about global warming as the end of the unit, thereby they are asked to turn complex reading material into a structured visual map.

TUTORIAL

The site is simple and easy to navigate, since it is for a very specific task. Once you’ve created your account or access through your Google account, you can start creating diagrams by clicking on the big plus sign.

There you will see a full screen with the main topic in the center, there you can type in the box and in the plus sign you can start adding branches.

Clicking with the right button you can access more options to change colour, add comments, add shapes to the new categories.

After creating your diagram, on the top right, you there is a panel where you can find buttons to present it online (1), share it (2), download it as PDF or image (3), share it to work collaboratively (4) and also add comments (5).

You also have the chance to look for other mind maps writing the topic you want to explore.

BENEFITS

Coggle includes a very versatile set of advantages for EFL classrooms. It helps students' moving from simple content visualization to support language acquisition. It transforms passive reading and note-taking into active, collaborative, and challenging tasks.

1. Knowledge Construction and Digital Competence

Firstly, Coggle can be used to promote collaborative knowledge construction and essential digital competence. As students share in real-time their progress, they also negotiate meaning constantly to agroup the information hierarchically and semanticly.

These activities match perfectly with the Digital Competence Framework for Educators (DigCompEdu), since they focus on digital tools to encourage learners’ common construction of knowledge. This also proves to make students active co-creators of knowledge.

2. Hot for HOTS (Engaging Higher-Order Thinking Skills)

Another aspect to consider is the fact that creating diagrams and mind maps pushes students into higher-order thinking skills (HOTS), since it requires deep engagement with the source material. In order to create a coherent diagram, they first must analyze the text—breaking down complex concepts (like global warming) into smaller parts (causes, impacts, and solutions). Organizing and structuring these concepts yields the result of a new product.

All the processes mentioned before help students to engage in the highest levels of Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy. Wedlock (2017) states the application of Bloom’s taxonomy to the digital generation ensures the activity, promotes critical thought and synthesis. This is done since students have to evaluate relationships and prioritize information, thus technology is used to enhance complex cognitive effort.

3. Enhancing Language Development through CALL

Finally, the tool proves to be highly effective for Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL)-focused development, particularly in vocabulary and reading skills.

Lexical Competence: Since mind maps have graphical nature, this feature helps students reduce long texts to single keywords and essential phrases. This means students focuss in lexical competence and contextualized usage of the terms selected. Chapelle and Jamieson (2008) have stated that effective CALL can be reached by using technology to isolate and categorize vocabulary.

Reading Efficiency: Making student summarize long texts into words of short phrases makes them work on reading for specific information and summarizing long pieces of text. This visual reduction process aids long-term retention of both the content and the associated English terminology (Abdallah, 2021).

Suggested Class Task:
Collaborative Mind Map on Global Warming

This task is designed to be delivered to 7th grade students in a bilungual primary school in CABA.

Task: Students will create collaboratively a diagram on global warming using this as end of the unit assessment. They will enhance critical thinking and language skills through visual organization. Then, students will create a video presenting the chart, how and why they decide the design and expand on the content. They will be evaluated based on a rubric considering their fluency, accuracy and capacity to explain the reason behind their decisions.

They will be required to include the following branches:

Importance of addressing the issue.
Causes.
Impact / consequences.
Concrete examples.
Possible solutions.

Framework: CALL and DigCompEdu

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