Mind map design

Hello again!!!!

This time I have been trying different tools for creating mind maps. I love mind maps because they are very useful for everything: studying, reviewing, preparing a conference, whatever! So, here I bring you different tools you can use for designing them:

Mindmeister 
Coggle
Mind42
SpiderScribe
Bubbl
Creately  

I have created a mind map with the main contents of plants' lesson. Using it, I could explain students all the lesson, and they can follow the class, as well as studying it and reviewing it at the end of the lesson. 

In order to create my mind map I have used two of tools above: coggle and SpiderScribe. In both, the first thing you have to do (as usual) is to sign up. They have free plans, although they are not as complete as the paying-plans and, in SpiderScribe, you have some advertisements.

Firstly, I am going to focus on coggle. This one is very interesting because you can invite colleagues for designing a collaborative mind map. I think this feature is awesome for both, teachers and students. You can include emojis (you have to type :xxx:, so, for example, if you want to include a evergreen tree you type :evergreen:). You also can include images, links... but, at least in the free plan, you can not choose the exact position of the images. You can select/change mind map's colors and forms too, but in the free plan you have less variety of them.

This tool is very easy-to-use and, just in case, you have a window at the right bottom part in which you have some commands you will need for create your mind map. My problem with this tool arrived when I wanted to embed my creation in this blog's entry. As it is big, when I embed it here..... look what happens!

So, I have also download my mind map as an image, but...when I include it here... it is too small, so you can not read it!!! Have a look:

Here I leave you the link

So, because of these problems, I decide to try a different tool. I chose SpiderScribe. As the previous one, it is very easy to use. Comparing both tools I would say that SpiderScribe plus points are: you can select a lot of font and back colours; you can decide where to locate the images; and you can embed more things than in Coggle, for example: word documents, maps or calendar events. On the other hand, SpiderScribe does not have a collaborative option, nor different colours/shapes for the arrows.

Below these lines, you can see the mind map the I have created in SpiderScribe. It is the same contents than the one I did on Coggle. This time, when I was going to embed it, I realize that I had to select the preview's size and, depending on the % you can not see it complete; that is why it is so tiny. But, on top you have a button that says "open full size" so, if you click on it, you will be lead to the mind map in the website. There is big so you will have to move around it in order to read each part and open different elements I have included.

In conclusion, it has been very easy to create the mind maps, but also very messy sharing/embedding them. This is, in my view, the feature that different mindmap-tool websites should improve. Apart from that...I hope you find this post interesting and you start to create your own (maybe collaborative) mind maps.

Have a nice weekend!!