mindmaps
April 4, 2005
My sleep schedule is so out of whack. I’m feeling it’s like 9pm, but it’s almost eleven. Yikes! I didn’t realize that DST would throw me off so much. It’s either that or it’s the creatine powder I’ve been seasoning my rice with. I wanted to mention something about mindmaps here because it’s something I use quite frequently.
Mindmaps are drawings of your ideas, plans, anything. Instead of a list, you make a sort of tree or flow chart. It’s purposefully flexible, so you let your instinct take over and categorize things. I learned about it originally in a franklin covey class at work. Remember making outlines in school. numeral 1, then letter a, then roman numeral IV. what the hell? I never understood that! Just like most of english classes, you get stuck in the grammar, and forget how to create.
FreeMind is a popular and free mind mapping software used in the open source community. I love it. I have seen tonight though that there are more things you can do with it than I have done. Somebody created a flash freemind viewer so you can view your map online. That is really excellent. You can do it anyway with Freemind’s java plugin, but there is something about this use of the XML that really impresses me.
When I get around to it, I have a plan for a mindmapping article I want to write. After seeing some uses of freemind, I have a lot to learn before I can teach it.
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