I love mind maps! I simply can’t get enough of them whenever I do any project. Be it tasking out my day, writing a story about any of my many adventures, planning a lesson, categorizing various ancient cultures, or breaking down large ideas that I’m having trouble with. As someone that is a highly visual learner, being able to visually map out my thoughts helps me structure and comprehend otherwise complicated thought patterns.
I know I’m not alone in this as we can find mind maps, also called graphic organizers, all throughout out our Western educational system. We ask students to complete them on a regular basis, and as an adult, expect other adults to know how to do them. Because of their prevalence, we tend to forget that doing them is not an intuitive skill but rather one that needs to be developed along with our other prefrontal cortex skills.
Unfortunately until recently there hasn’t been a very quick and easy way to make them on my computer. My last project I did in which I made cultural map identifying the various demographics I belong to and how that has affected my life took approximately 13 hours of laboriously making small boxes and arrows and then trying to line them up just right in PowerPoint. The actual cognitive process to come up with the material was only around 2 hours worth of work, but the process of turning thoughts into a presentation took a little over 5 times longer.
Thankfully I’ll never have to do that again as I was recently turned onto some new websites that cut out all that extra work and let me make and present mind maps with my students.
Benefits of Coggle:
- Very easy to use for new users
- Very intuitive and easy to manipulate for new users
- Colorful and visually engaging
- Great for presentations
Short comings of Coggle:
- Subscription based.
Click here to directly access Coggle
Benefits of Text2Mindmap:
- Provides an wonderful text format layout when you are done
- Can enter data via text format, or on the mind map itself
- Very user friendly
- Clean and clear visuals
Shortcomings of Text2mindmap:
- There is no way to make links between different branches once the parent branches have split.
- Currently in Beta testing
Click here to access Text2Mindmap
(Update, the cite to Text2Mindmap is now dead, however, the link will direct you to a new site using the same formatting at the old cite.)
