You probably think I’m going to enthuse about the maps and their uses. Well, I’m not. Not in this post. You can find several acres of my enthusiasm for all types of mind maps at WikIT. (If acres are a suitable measure for wiki pages.)
No, not the maps themselves, those two words “mind maps”.
This is not a term that goes back centuries even though some forms of tree diagram do. So, many languages other than English have just adopted “mind maps” as well.
As a result, when we search on Twitter, we get to see what the mind mapping action is in Spanish, French and German-speaking countries. The Spanish do have mapas mentales, the French cartes heuristiques (and quite a few others), but “mind maps” is used often enough that Internet searches reveal activity in countries the world over.
And thanks to Google Translate, we can even keep up with what mappers are doing in Thailand, Indonesia and Japan.
A while ago, Nick Duffill published a paper on Root Maps (Oh yes! that’s not “route maps”).
I didn’t pick up on it until Wallace Tait referred to it on Twitter yesterday. And after seeing it, I felt it had to be part of WikIT. And now it is: Root Maps
The other item is a guest blog post that I was recently invited to contribute at the Visualmapper blog. It’s an overview of information map types and when to use the different varieties, all hanging off a large mind map which you can download in MindManager form, image or PDF.
Concise Learning is a new book (it came out yesterday) about learning with mind maps, but it’s a lot more than that.
I was invited to critique this book, and I read it in late draft. In my opinion, it should be no more than an arm’s length away from the desk of every student starting college. It sets out a systematic five-phase study process, built on the principle that visualizing information makes learning concrete and generates interest. It describes how to organize the material being learned visually. It gives a method for critical thinking. It shows how to spot gaps in understanding and fill those gaps and it does all this in a highly motivating, visual, style.
It reduces work by identifying key points early on – introducing the ‘question culture’ of the curious mind – and provides important questions that you can ask yourself to support critical thinking.
I recommend parents give this book to new college students to read before the next semester begins.
It’s been a few months since WikIT published an extensive series of information maps prepared by medical practitioners and students studying medicine.
Recently, some excellent charts started appearing in WikIT’s uploaded files. Then a small entry was added to Medical profession’s use of mind mapping. I had to do a little detective work to get in touch with the uploader, and check that he held the copyright, but once he assured me he did, I was able to add this excellent and detailed new resource as a separate article Medical mind map sources – Zoom out – Pharmacotherapy. These go well beyond mind maps, into the field of information landscapes.
They are the work of Maha Atef, a Clinical Pharmacist and a Healthcare Quality Specialist based in Cairo, Egypt, who has his own site devoted to the topic.
I am often asked “Which is the best mindmapping software?”
It’s a complicated question, because I’m not one of those mind mapping fundamentalists who think that mind mapping has to be done one way no matter what the maps is for, no matter who’ll see it and no matter how long it is expected to live and grow … Oh, and before I forget, no matter what your budget is!
So I wrote an article on topicscape.com, talking about which software I’ve found best for what.
That was two or three years ago, and it needed an update, better organization and more images to help readers see the types of maps produced. Moving the updated article to WikIT, the mind mapping wiki, seemed like a good idea as well.
Sean West bought a Fujitsu ScanSnap* and found that it was easy to integrate with Topicscape.
He comments on Topicscape’s depth of features, robustness and, when allied with this scanner, finds it superior to “commercial document management systems costing in the hundreds and thousands of dollars, making Topicscape a bargain for its features, in my mind.”
A nice marriage of hardware and software, Sean! We’re pleased to hear that it gives you what you need without spending a bundle.
Roy
* I don’t know which model Sean is using - maybe not the one pictured here. The Fujitsu ScanSnap range runs from small, light portables to heavy-duty desktop models.
A new Topicscape Pro installer is now online here.
The Outlook connection to Topicscape Pro was not working in 64-bit versions of Windows. The symptom: Outlook objects in Topicscape, like Tasks, Contacts or Calendar events, were not opening in Outlook when double-clicked from inside Topicscape.
Fixing this required a change in Windows Registry handling and that change was made in the Topicscape installer. As Topicscape itself has not changed, its build number is the same.
You only need to download the latest version if you are using Outlook with Topicscape and you are running 64-bit Windows 7 or 64-bit Windows Vista.
Imagine holding a virtual highlighter in your hand as you read web pages, documents, or PDF files. You highlight sections of text you want to save or indicate images to preserve, and with a familiar keystroke, send them to Topicgrazer.
It works with web sites, text, Word documents, PDF files, spreadsheets and more – anything, in fact, that can be saved to the clipboard. Each snippet is headed with its source if it came from a web site or Word, for example.
By the time you have finished, all the portions you select are extracted and gathered in one document that you can open with Wordpad, MS Word or OpenOffice Writer.
Right now! 3D Topicscape Pro has a half-price special offer available to Mindjet MindManager users. Topicscape works well alongside MindManager and extends what that software can do into one of the most powerful and visual forms of file organizer.
is a new book (it came out yesterday) about learning with mind maps, but it’s a lot more than that.
