Flow charts using smart art in Microsoft Word – or you don’t know what you don’t know.

I recently asked for some help (boy do I need it) on how to scaffold planning for practice and outcome design and development for the digitech course I am teaching this year. It is a massive learning curve. I was hoping to get a ‘generic’ plan, which was not forth coming. (although I did get some useful ideas, but I still need to build my own) One teacher said he got the students to make their own using smart art in Microsoft word, which is part of our office 365 package. He gave me a quick demo, and I was blown away by how quick and easy the smart art tool was to use. I had previously been using draw.io to get students to draw flowcharts, but the smart draw in word in much simpler to use. You do need to be on the desktop version of word rather than the online/office 365 version to get the smart art option though. Things like dichotomous keys, practical pathways, next steps for A, M and E level answers, well the answer was already there in Microsoft word. They are perhaps a little generic , but in terms of ease, it is an absolute win! I was able to whip up a little flow chart to show file hierarchy in about 2 minutes….

So then I started having a little play, and it is super easy to change colours, fonts, add bits in and take bits out

And you can save as a picture so they are easy to insert into other docs.

And this is a really good example of a little thing I didn’t know. And knowing that the smart art option had these would have saved me loads of time last year. I asked a few times on twitter and various PLNs about flow charting options, and no-one ever suggested this (possibly because lots of other NZ schools are google schools….).

And I guess too it is a reminder to place value on different skill sets. Not everyone has to teach things in the same way, or have the same way of getting to get things done. But this little tidbit that took 2 minutes to receive, was a real game changer for me. I wish there were more ways to share those little gems of knowledge we all have, that people simply don’t know they don’t know.

Have fun