Kristianstill

It is not often that I find two tools in one day that I think I will go on to use as a teacher and also encourage my students to use to develop their own learning and presentation skills.  However Text2MindMap is the second home run of the day.

Text 2 Mind map is a web application that converts texts to a mind maps. Text 2 Mind Map takes a structured list of words or sentences, interprets it, and draws a mind map of them.

I am not sure their description really does it justice. What Text2MindMap actually does is give simple word lists a visual hierarchy or organisation, albeit one that you predetermine. It would be very good for ranking and evaluating factors that impact upon a topic, in the example provided, the factors that influence a training programme (it was late and I didnt really think about ICT applications. The look and feel of the site reminds me visuwords and both sites certainly bring words to life.

Flowcharts has real potential. I am sure that there will have been a lot of hard work bringing the site this far. There are some strong draw features, such as alignment,  gradients and line types as well as a large clip art bank to draw from. Some interesting collaboration and export options.

Its a little slow rendering at the moment and maybe one or two visio-structural improvements to be made but all in all, it was not to taxing to produce my first flowcharts, chart.

A couple of points, if the menus are unseen, look under your browser toolbars (View / toolbars). If you find it hard to find a function, simply holding down CTRL brings up the shortcut menu (a neat idea I thought). While there maybe offline tools out there, like the aforementioned SERIF Draw Plus X2 package, this site does permit the collaboration of all good web apps.

Browsing yesterday I came across a powerpoint tip for presenters, as teachers, I thought it would be very useful in the classroom. Simply, during a presentation, pressing the ‘B’ key turns the screen black, press the ‘B’ key again, and the slideshow presses on.