I've never been big in creating flow charts and before this exercise had never even heard the phrase "mind maps" before... I think this is due in part to the fact that I was an English major in undergrad and I feel flow charts are more suited for the sciences.
I first decided to use flowchart.com but after waiting 10 min for my invitation email, I decide to move on and use Gliffy. On Gliffy I was able to create an entire flowchart without even creating an account and it wasn't until I went to save my flow chart was I prompted to create one. I found Gliffy to be extremely user friendly and liked that I was able to choose the extension for my file such as PNG and JPG.
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| my creation in Gliffy! I made it very simple because I wanted it to be easy to understand |
Next I went on mindmeister.com to find out exactly what mind mapping is. However I was quickly turned off from the site when I saw a variety of different prices for the mind mapping software. Although I noticed they had a free trial, I did not want to get caught in a situation where I would begin to be charged once the trial ended so I left the site. I then decided to go to bubbl.us and was relieved to find that it looked similar in appearance to the very easy to use Gliffy.com. I actually found bubble.us easier to use than Gliffy since all I had to do was press TAB to create a new bubble!
Although I have never found a use for flowcharts or mind maps useful as a student I still believe I will make a effort to use them in my future classroom. Not everyone learns or studies in the same way that I do, so even though I don't benefit from flowcharts and mind maps my students very well might!
I definitely prefer flowcharts to mind maps because I believe they are more organized and easy to understand, however I do believe mind maps serve as a useful way to get your ideas down on paper. For example if I assigned students to write a paper on a heroic journey, a mind map would be helpful for students to add the elements of a heroic journey and use connectors to illustrate the ones that are related.
I definitely prefer flowcharts to mind maps because I believe they are more organized and easy to understand, however I do believe mind maps serve as a useful way to get your ideas down on paper. For example if I assigned students to write a paper on a heroic journey, a mind map would be helpful for students to add the elements of a heroic journey and use connectors to illustrate the ones that are related.
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