Free Friday: Mind/Concept Mapping Software
This week's Free Friday takes a look at mind/concept mapping software. Whether you're looking to visually map ideas, concepts or arguments, here are a few free software solutions to help you get the job done:
- Bubbl.us: The best thing about Bubbl.us is that it's entirely web-based, so there's nothing to download and it's easy to share and collaborate with others online. Features include the ability to email your mind map, save it as an image, and embed it on your blog or website.
- The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE): VUE is a project at Tufts UIT Academic Technology, which provides a visual environment for structuring, sharing and presenting digital information. All software in this category allows you to structure ideas, concepts and information, but VUE shines it its ability to easily integrate digital content, whether stored locally or on the web. It also excels at presentation. VUE has good user documentation and a nice screencast overview.
- FreeMind: A more traditional mind mapping tool, FreeMind is a Java-based open source software. Its other potential uses include keeping track of projects, tracking research and as a knowledge base. Features include support of HTML links, one-click navigation, export map to HTML, an XML storage format and easy integration with many wikis. FreeMind doesn't support online sharing/collaboration or do well with rich graphics. -M
