Popplet in Education: A Mind-Mapping Application for Language Teaching and Learning

Introduction

Engaging and motivating students in general and language learners in particular throughout the learning process is not an easy task to achieve. As a result, many research studies showed that technology, including computers and other small devices, can be essential to achieving significant improvements in students’ productivity and teachers’ creativity (Egbert, 2020; Hubbard, 2017; Kessler, 2020). The effective use of technology in teaching and learning inside and outside classrooms can yield so many benefits. For instance, it can increase students’ engagement, and motivation, accelerate learning, make it accessible when offered online, and enhance the students’ 21^st century skills (El Shaban & Egbert, 2018). It can also transform teaching by connecting teachers to their students, online resources, and Learning Management Systems (LMS) to assist them in developing their pedagogy to meet the needs of their students. Moreover, technology through online learning systems can provide more opportunities for teachers to teach and students to learn. In addition to all that mentioned above, online teaching and learning contributed to reducing costs associated with the teaching domain for both teachers, students and administrators. Moreover, the use of technology could lead to the following achievements:

• (a)

  transform the traditional classroom environment from a teacher-centered to a student-centered environment (Drexler, 2010), (b) lead to learners’ autonomous learning (Terrell, 2013), (c) help teachers create a more engaging and interactive learning environment (Egbert & Neville, 2015; Stanley, 2013), (d) provide second language learners with the opportunity to interact via speaking and writing in the target language, and (e) motivate “learners to produce more language than they otherwise have done” both outside and inside classrooms (Stanley, 2013, p. 2). As cited from (El Shaban, 2017, p. 64).

Therefore, it is important for teachers to be familiar with the use of technology as it can be vital in improving the standard of education in general and of foreign language teaching and learning in particular. In this chapter, the author will provide an overview of one of the education technology or Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) tools that is easy to use and from her own experience as a teacher educator and an ESL teacher contributed to the development of her students’ collaborative, interpretive, brainstorming and, of course, their writing skills. In this chapter, a background review of using mind mapping of some previous research studies and of the technology in use, Popplet, is presented. Following this, a sample lesson plan presenting how to use Popplet as a pre-writing strategy. The chapter concludes with some limitations of using the application for teaching.