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Mind What? Mind Mapping in SPEC1 at ILTA13 Catalyze Your Ideas

By Gary Berger posted 08-08-2013 13:02

  

We'll be using mind mapping during SPEC1, Making Sure The Technology Matters.  Essentially mind mapping is a creative way of visually organizing and depicting ideas and their associations with each other.  Its a great tool for facilitation as well.  

WikiHow's artical on "How to Make a Mind Map" outlines 11 steps that include;

  • Understand some uses
    • Brainstorming
    • Planning
    • Goal setting
    • Note taking
    • GROUP WORK
    • etc 
  • Prepare a rough draft
  • Generate a topic (we'll do that for you in SPEC1)
  • Place that topic in the center of the map
  • Size (keep to an A4 sheet if possible)
  • Write what comes to mind, draw associations as branches, etc
  • Be succinct (impossible for me)
  • Continue branching
  • As new ideas come forth, draw new branches
  • Repeat branching
  • When you've finished, study the results, observe associations and relate
  • Go back to beginning and to use the famous words of one of my current colleagues "Wash, Rinse, Repeat"

There are many many free as well as inexpensive versions available for easy download.   I have used FreeMind for years (which is, you guessed it, FREE!) as well as the commercial product MindMapper (just a tad pricey at $249.00).   The trick now is to find one that is available on the PC, the iPhone (or Droid for that matter), and has cloud access.  There are some out there. 

I looked at a few blog entries and ran across these;
-Five Best Mind Mapping Tools by Alan Henry:  Coggle, a web-based mind-mapper caught my eye.  I'm checking it out now.  Its free.
-A Comparison of Mind Mapping Apps for the iPad by Chuck Frey:  Great graphic here.  iThoughts by CMS ($9.99) (only for iOS)

-And from Natalie Alesi (@legalerswelcome) MindJet

-MindMaple (lite version is free) 

 




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