When you hear of Venn diagrams, you may think of John Venn, the British Mathematician who invented the two or more overlapping circles used in Mathematics to show how sets relate among themselves. They are also quite useful for examining similarities and differences before writing about a certain topic. Therefore, in this chapter, we are going to deal with Venn diagrams as an activity performed before the writing process. We may give the complete Venn diagrams to our students, either before or after setting a topic so that students complete them.
As an activity performed before the writing process, it enables students to organize their writing. In other words, they will be able to organize their ideas according to their similarities or differences. A Venn diagram is very helpful to compare two or more items. Inside the circles we may use adjectives as well as words or expressions concerning comparison. The elements inside a Venn diagram are the details to be used in a comparison.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
- Summer holidays versus winter holidays—drawing Venn diagrams using OpenOffice Drawing
- Living in the country versus living in an overcrowded city—drawing Venn diagrams with clip art from Microsoft Word
- Being famous versus being unknown—drawing Venn diagrams with SmartDraw software
- Having a healthy lifestyle versus bad habits—completing a Venn diagram using the website: (http://classtools.net/)
- Famous coincidences—drawing Venn diagrams of Abraham Lincoln and John Fitzgerald Kennedy using Paint
- Comparing different types of pollution—drawing Venn diagrams using Microsoft Office Visio 2007
- Types of students—drawing Venn diagrams using Edraw Max
- Puzzles—placing adjectives and sentences in a Venn diagram according to the description of personal possession
In this chapter, you will be able to design several types of Exercises concerning writing and composing through Moodle 1.9.5 using Venn diagrams. Students can use these diagrams as a prewriting activity in order to organize their thinking. They will be able to design different types of writing. This technique can be used to compare two or more items or people, write a "for-and-against" essay, as well as state a point of view supporting ideas using facts supplied by the Venn diagram keywords.
We can design the activities in such a way that students can interact among themselves while completing the Moodle courses. Apart from that, each recipe will describe how to develop this technique in order to carry out the Venn diagram in another way, using resources from Web 2.0.
Venn diagrams are simple graphic organizers that are a very helpful tool to make it easier to write the final draft. Apart from that, through this methodology students are capable of understanding how to put data together. Students are also able to examine different types of information.
We are going to design the activities using different software such as EDraw Max, SmartDraw, Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, Visio as well as resources from Web 2.0. In this case, we are going to use the http://classtools.net/ website where students can complete the Venn diagrams by themselves and embed it into our Moodle course. We will also design Venn diagrams with words and pictures. The addition of pictures in this type of Exercise creates a more visually rich activity, apart from the fact that students will imagine them before writing.