Concept Mapping Web 2.0 Style

Concept maps, mind maps, graphic organizers… whatever you call them, they’re great teaching and learning tools.  Some of the ways I’ve used them or seen them used include:

1. Quizzes and Exams – give your students a list of concepts to map out to demonstrate their understanding of the relationships among the concepts
2. Study Aids – ask your students to create and share concept maps of the chapters in their text books or other content you have them read
3. Lecture Aids – create and hand out a partially filled out concept map of your lecture and have your students fill in the missing material as you present it in the lecture

There are lots of great concept mapping tools out there but, in keeping with the web 2.0 theme of this blog, I’m going to tell you about a few free online tools that you might enjoy.  These will be brief intros to the tools. I’ll post lengthier descriptions of each in later posts.

Mind42
The concept mapping tool by Mind42 is a good choice if you’re looking for a tool that supports collaboration. This tool has built-in connections with Skype and Google Talk so you or your students can easily work together mapping things out.  Additionally, this tool makes it quite simple to add links, to-do lists, and wikipedia pages to your concepts and it has a revision tracking feature. It also does a fair job of importing concept maps from other programs and exporting your finished maps in a variety of formats and its fairly simple to use point-and-click interface means you’ll be creating some decent concept maps quickly.  However, if you’re looking for a concept mapping tool that provides you with the versatility to create maps that have large chunks of text or include symbols that can have text in them, this tool probably will not work well for you.

Mindomo
If you’re looking for a concept mapping tool that allows you to include multimedia in your maps, then Mindomo might be a good choice for you.  Another feature that makes this tool stand out is that you have access to a large database of public maps that other users have created and shared. Additionally, you have the option to embed your maps in other web pages.  The tool itself is fairly simple to use and include the typical text bubbles that you’re likely to associate with concept mapping software.  As with Mind42, this tool lacks the library of symbols that you find in a program like Inspiration, but I think the other features make this a tool worth checking out.

MindMeister
MindMeister is very similar to Mind42 in its basic capabilities, but the user interface is quite different.  If you need a basic concept mapping tool that provides options for sharing and revision tracking, and lets you include links and symbols but you want that in a package with the more traditional control panel, then this might be the tool for you.

If you haven’t yet tried using concept mapping tools in your classroom, give one of these a try. They’re easy to use and you might find that they can be quite beneficial to the teaching and learning process.