My favorite thing about Mind42 as a tool is that it doesn't require Adobe Flash Player, which I'm pretty sure we can all agree is delivered via a direct portal from either Hades or the fires of Mount Doom. Mind42 is a handy, free, easy to use, online mind-mapping tool. It is limited in a number of ways (it formats nodes automatically meaning the user can't move them around, images can only be added via url, there are only three sizes of text and no alternate fonts, etc.), but its simplicity makes it really easy to pick up.
Additionally, it has collaboration capabilities and to-do functions that would make it handy for managing large and/or group projects with students. Teachers could use nodes to break down an assignment into incremental steps, each with its own "to-do" for students to mark off as they complete each task. I could see that being useful both for helping students understand all that they need to do (and in what order) as well as for holding students (somewhat) accountable for what they are doing. Similarly, students working in a group could apportion tasks and keep tabs on one another with the nodes.
In a more student-driven, it could also be used as a visual for students to create a research plan that the teacher could then view and make suggestions on.
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| I just recapped my Spring Break to-do list. You know, a to-done list. |
Basically, if I were into mind-mapping rather than free-writing and listing activities, I could dig this, but I might not use it in my composition classes because I have precious little time for teaching any software, and most of that time is devoted to showing students how to insert page numbers and page breaks into their word-processing software of choice.
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