I learned about Creately, an online diagramming application, from a short Lifehacker post two months ago. I immediately bookmarked that post as a reminder to write about it for ProfHacker readers, as I think one could easily use Creately in the classroom just as many of us use Google Docs and all the other Google tools. [In fact, if I were a betting person, I'd put money on Google buying Creately at some point.]
If you have ever worked with Microsoft Visio (and paid for Visio in oh so many ways, either in cash or blood pressure points), you can expect the same sorts of things with Creately, but with the added benefits of:
- Collaboration: at all pay levels (free, $4.95/mo and $9.95/mo) you can have multiple collaborators on a document (the number of collaborators increases with the pay level)
- Commenting: all collaborators can comment on your diagrams
- Multiple Revision Support: have a backup of every step you made when creating your diagram, and be able to revert to any of those steps
- Quick Publish with Short URL: export and publish your diagram via the Create.ly short URL service
- many, many more
One of the many features of Creately is that it isn’t Visio, but does most of the things that Visio does: you can create rich business diagrams, user interface diagrams, software & systems diagrams, network diagrams, and of course even your own mindmaps as we recently learned about here on ProfHacker.
[I'll spare you my diatribe about Visio and just note that it's fortunate it doesn't have a name easily made into a nickname like Adobe PageMaker was easily turned into Adobe "RageMaker" around the shop, because it would have one. Having to use Visio for UML diagrams and wireframes drove me into the loving arms of paper to do those things whenever possible, because it was easier and things turned out better...which is telling because as my creative director reminds me, I can't draw. The moral of the story? Creately is great and would have made my life so much better.]
You Can Start with Templates
When you create a new Creately document, you can choose “blank document” and start building with shapes of your own, or you can select one of the many pre-defined document types and see examples before you start to build (or massage the example into the document you want to create). Once you create your document, you have several options for sharing, saving, and exporting—with UML diagrams, for instance, you can export the data in the diagram as XML.
Comments Add to the Creately Experience
I can already imagine uses for Creately in my professional and technical writing courses or any design courses I might one day teach again; those of you in other departments will likely see the benefits as well—instead of students using expensive software for just a few diagrams during the semester, or trying to force the drawing tools in their existing office programs to work (although not as well), why not give Creately a shot at the free level?
If a student and an instructor (or a student and their peer review group) are collaborators on a document, they can comment on the document.
Imagine a group is working together to mock up a web site or a software application—perhaps in preparation for making the product, but perhaps simply working with elements of design rather than code—Creately provides all sorts of UI elements for use in these types of diagrams. In fact, here’s a little video for you!
I urge you to check out Creately and their Public, Plus, and Pro plans. They also have “Creately Scholarships” so that if you are “a charity, NGO, Open-Source project or any other do-gooder” you can apply to use Creately for free. I’ll be honest: I don’t pay for a lot of software, preferring free wherever possible. But Creately is something I would not hesitate to pay for and use in my professional work or work in the classroom. It’s good stuff.
Comments
1. Charan - November 19, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Hi Julie,
Thanks for your write-up blush... Let us know if there's anything we can do to make your Creately experience better.
Cheers Charan
2. Julie Meloni - November 20, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Hi Charan - my pleasure! Hopefully, because of this post, people will start using Creately in academic contexts (which is what we're all about here at ProfHacker) and help raise awareness of this great tool. If any tweaky things come up, or I get some ideas, I won't hesitate at all to give feedback!
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