Mind Mapping?
on 12.05.05, 09:27pm in software • comments (5)
I’m a pretty big fan of personal notetaking, whether it’s with OneNote or a Moleskine notebook. Lately, I’ve been looking more at using Mind Mapping software such as MindJet, and was curious if anyone has any horror or success stories using mind mapping software that they’d care to share. Anyone?
Kees Leune (December 6, 2005 @ 1:54 am)
Mind maps are a powerful tool for visualising associative thoughts. We have our students use it extensively throughout their academic carreer and it proves to be a good tool. Unfortunately, from an instructor point of view, mind maps lack completely in any kind of formal foundation, or methodology that students can rely on to construct them. That makes it very difficult to grade a mind map, or even to provide any kind of feedback.
As a result, mind maps are really not usuable for sharing thoughts or communicating ideas to anyone else but yourself. Having said that, they are excellently suitable for just that.
The software that I use is called Vym, but as most software I use, it is not available on the Windows platform. In selecting mind map software, one of the things to consider is whether you want to have provisions for true graphs, rather than just for trees. I find a tree approach often too limiting.
Tommy Williams (December 6, 2005 @ 9:20 am)
I bought MindManager X5 Pro (after trying Mindjet) and, though I tried to use it often — and even subscribed to a number of blogs of mind-mapping enthusiasts — it never quite worked for me.
The comment by Kees Leune about the tree approach being too limiting was one of the major blocking factors for me. I would often find myself duplicating information in multiple sections of the tree.
The sweet spot for me, personally, seems to be a hybrid of OneNote and Excel. OneNote 12 has tables (see http://blogs.msdn.com/chris_pratley/archive/2005/09/22/473082.aspx) but I’m going to wait for later betas before I make the plunge.
Frank McPherson (December 6, 2005 @ 9:56 am)
I also have MindManager X5 Pro and it works well for me for certain types of information. I don’t see MindManager as a replacement to OneNote. If I need to take free-form notes, such as during meetings, OneNote is the tool. If I need to take notes about a topic I am studying (say the network infrastructure for a project I am working on), I find MindManager to be a better tool. What I particularly like is the ability to link files and web sites to topics in Mind Manager. Unfortunately, I think MindManager is a little high on the price side.
Hobart Swan (December 6, 2005 @ 8:17 pm)
MindManager is actually being used quite successfully by both students and teachers. You might want to check out a story about how one UCLA law professor uses maps at http://www.mindjet.com/us/company/press_center/case_studies.php?s=2. You might also want to check out thestudenttabletpc blog at http://studenttabletpc.blogs.com/the_student_tablet_pc/2005/01/mind_mapping_ov.html for more ideas on how to use mapping in education. Mapping is used extensively in both pre-and post graduate schools in both the UK and Germany (and increasingly all around the world) to capture, organize and share complex information. Many people say that the lack of a formal methodology behind mapping actually makes it very useful for education, enabling students to organize information in a very personal way that makes sense to them. But I agree: Asking students to turn in homework in the form of a map might not work in all cases (though I have personally visited high schools in New York City where teachers assign mapping for U.S. History and electronics assignements and it seems to work very well).
Reggie Ryan (December 7, 2005 @ 1:26 pm)
I’ve used MindManager 6 successfully in two settings; brainstorming and organizing ideas. It is terrific to allow a user to brainstorm an idea, then export the completed product as a MS Word document.
I’ve also used it to organize resources for my dissertation. It has been challenging for me to understand the relationships between studies/material/authors as I wrestle with a dissertation proposal.
MindManager has allowed me to visually portray how my resources relate, and how to flesh out any common themes, underlying currents or problems. I’ve essentially taken 50-60 studies and imported them into a mindmap, then visually laid them out. It is much easier to manipulate them, as well as notate their relationships.