What You Need To Know About FLOWCHARTING

FLOWCHARTING

A flowchart is used to communicate a process, and its power is in making the process visual. Consisting of shapes, text, and arrows, flowcharts range from giving step by step instructions to mapping the flow of an idea.

Flowcharting allows us, future teachers, to break any process down into individual events or activities and to display these in shorthand form showing the logical relationships between them. They can be used in a lesson to promote better understanding of processes, resulting in students' success.



An example of a process, explained by a flowchart is, a caterpiller turning into a butterfly or an addition sum. The symbols used to represent each event may take any form. They may be boxes, circles, diamonds or other shapes, or events may simply be described in words. Connections between events are always represented by lines; usually with arrowheads to show the direction or order in which they occur. These lines represent the flow of activity in the process being described; hence the name of the technique.

SIMPLE EXAMPLE OF A FLOWCHART

Draw a flowchart to find the largest of three numbers A, B, and C.

Advantages of Flowcharting in the Classroom

• Communication: Flowcharts are better way of communicating the logic of a system to all the students


• Effective analysis: With the help of flowchart, problem can be analysed in more effective way.


• Build a step-by-step picture of the process for analysis and discussion.

Disadvantages of Flowcharting

• Complex logic: Sometimes, the program logic is quite complicated. In that case, flowchart becomes complex and clumsy.


• Alterations and Modifications: If alterations are required the flowchart may require re-drawing completely.


• Reproduction: As the flowchart symbols cannot be typed, reproduction of flowchart becomes a problem.


• The essentials of what is done can easily be lost in the technical details of how it is done.

To learn more about flowcharting you can take a look at this video

http://video.about.com/presentationsoft/Creating-PowerPoint-Flowchart.htm

If you love to read then you can visit this site to learn more about flowcharts and how to create a flowchart.

http://office.microsoft.com/training/Training.aspx?AssetID=RP010198891033&CTT=6&Origin=RC010198841033

REFERENCES

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowchart

http://www.hci.com.au/hcisite2/toolkit/flowchar.htm

http://www.edrawsoft.com/flowchart-examples.php