{"id":347,"date":"2007-10-02T00:44:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-02T04:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/wordpress\/poetponders\/?p=347"},"modified":"2023-11-26T12:57:45","modified_gmt":"2023-11-26T18:57:45","slug":"mind-maps-and-other-organizers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/2007\/10\/02\/mind-maps-and-other-organizers\/","title":{"rendered":"Mind Maps and Other Organizers"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a Digital Writing Course<\/strong><\/p>\n

The thoughts for this week are in response to:<\/p>\n

In your blog: how might you digital note-taking tools (see links on the wiki) to have your students take notes\/engage in prewriting activities? Create a digital map using Inspiration (use a free trial download: http:\/\/www.inspiration.com<\/a>) about your potential final project topic; reflect on how you could use digital mapping for helping students exploring relationships between different topics\/images.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have to admit that I need more time to experiment with Inspiration 8, as well as other tools, because I am fairly set in my own note taking ways. Until I gather my thoughts a bit more, I can at least explain my own habits and my personal views on software tools.<\/p>\n

Before I start, I’ll make a pitch: If you use a Mac, the Omni Group<\/a> makes some of the best organizational tools I have used. (http:\/\/www.omnigroup.com\/<\/a>) I like the fact Omni applications do not \u201cfeel\u201d like PC software ported to the Mac \u2014 these are OS X applications from top to bottom.<\/p>\n

I love Word’s \u201cNotebook View\u201d on the Mac. <\/span><\/p>\n

I use the Notebook View in Word in every course I take. I tried adopting OmniOutliner, which is a great program, but there are some Word features I use so often that not having them in OO was annoying. On Windows, the Notebook View would be analogous to OneNote, which comes with Office for Students, I believe.<\/p>\n

There are times when OO is a better choice than Word. You can configure multiple columns with special features in OO, which is a really slick ability. I use checkboxes, pop-up lists, and even attachments.<\/p>\n

What? Attachments? Yes, you can link OO line items to files! So, if I have a point that refers to an Excel file, I can “attach” the file to my outline. That’s a great tool.<\/p>\n

If only I could mix the best of Word and OO, I’d be set.<\/p>\n

Notes help me a lot, even when I am planning a project. I take a lot of notes, make lists, and consider what will and will not work.<\/p>\n

OmniGraffle and Visio are good if I must be graphical.<\/p>\n

I’m not into random “clouds” or maps \u2014 I like linear organization and nice, neat lines. Anything random upsets me, literally. OmniGraffle, which is like Visio in many ways, helps me create perfect flowcharts and diagrams, aligned with a grid and connecting items via \u201csnaps\u201d that are always on corners or centers of sides.<\/p>\n

Other Thoughts<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am not one for \u201cfreewriting\u201d or other forms of brainstorming. I like to think slowly, carefully, and develop my thoughts internally. I think that is what makes me a decent writer and a good programmer. Maybe free associations and random thoughts work for others, but I need to pause and reflect on every thought. Even the nature of blog postings makes me uncomfortable at times; I like to edit my words multiple times, revising word choices and sentences.<\/p>\n

To assume that mapping, clouds, freewriting, and other tasks will help students is to assume a great deal about the nature of human thought. I often wrote stories, and then outlined them, to please teachers. I would do this because they insisted you could only write if you had completed the various pre-writing tasks. Nonsense, for me, and I have my earliest notebooks from elementary school and junior high to show that wrote complete stories without such tasks on paper.<\/p>\n

This does not mean that I did not pre-write in my mind, but it means that putting the thoughts on paper needed to be done in completed story form. If I tried their approach, I would waste hours trying to get circles and lines perfectly placed on a page. I’d spend so much time with the need for visual perfection that my anxiety would overwhelm me.<\/p>\n

Software tools for planning my writing have had much the same result. I end up trying to perfect designs in the applications instead of getting to work. There’s little benefit in being frustrated and overwhelmed by \u201cplanning\u201d when I already have a completed story or most of a paper outlined in my mind.<\/p>\n

Then again, not everyone can see computer code executing in their mind, either…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a Digital Writing Course The thoughts for this week are in response to: In your blog: how might you digital note-taking tools (see links…<\/p>\n

Continue readingMind Maps and Other Organizers<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1875,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"iawp_total_views":14,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,6,7,10],"tags":[53,77,154,353,354,356,384,385,398,568],"class_list":["post-347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-student","category-teaching","category-writing","tag-assignments","tag-brainstorming","tag-digital-composition","tag-microsoft-word","tag-mind-maps","tag-minnesota","tag-omnigraffle","tag-omnioutliner","tag-outlining","tag-visio","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/12\/FB_Banner_Pen_Mac.png?fit=1200%2C630&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfiw78-5B","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1804,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions\/1804"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}