Curiouser and Curiouser! on concept-maps http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic concept-maps Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb You have my attention Fri, 13 May 2005 10:08:32 +0100 <p><a href="http://matt.blogs.it/maps/cogpsych/Attention.html"><img border="0" align="left" width="480" height="384" style="padding: 25px;" src="http://matt.blogs.it/maps/cogpsych/Attention.jpg"></a></p><p>For a flavour of the sort of thing I'm working on I have uploaded a <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/maps/cogpsych/Attention.html">concept map of attention</a> which I am working on. Attention is one of the key topics I am studying for the Cognitive Psychology exam on Monday. I picked it because it is a compact topic with close links to Memory, another topic I am studying. I'm building concept maps from my notes because my reading in memory suggests that incidental learning through organisation is very effective.</p> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002598.html Great concept, well implemented Sat, 14 May 2005 08:19:40 +0100 <p><img align="left" width="105" height="82" style="padding: 10px;" src="http://matt.blogs.it/images/mini_cmap.jpg">I'm very grateful to Dave Pollard for <a href="http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2005/05/07.html#a1137">blogging</a> about <a href="http://cmap.ihmc.us/">IHMC CMapTools</a>. I used it to draw these <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/2005/05/13.html#a1826">study aids</a> and I think it's the program I have been looking for ever since I realised that I often want to think at a different level to Mind Maps (for which I use <a href="http://www.mindjet.com/uk/">Mind Manager</a>, but not Mind Manager X5). It fulfills a need that PersonalBrain never could. It allows me to concept map on a grand scale. PB always tightly constrained your focus which didn't suit me for many tasks. (BTW have <a href="http://www.thebrain.com/">TheBrain</a> gone out of business?)</p> <p>When I first looked at the IHMC website I was a little suspicious. The history of Academically developed software is littered with programs even a mother couldn't love (I should know, I wrote some of them). Even though the IHMC home page was a map exported from their tool, was it a tool that normal people would ever <strong>choose</strong> to use?</p> <p>In fact the answer is a resounding <strong><em>yes</em></strong>! CMapTools is a polished Java application. In 2 days of heavy use I've come across no bugs and, whilst it is a bit of a memory hog (routinely running around 170MB on my system) it's acceptably responsive (P4 1.6GHz, 1GB RAM, ATIRadeon7200 GPU).</p> <p>I do have some issues with the interface, when I have a little more time I'll try and get in touch with the developers. The ones I've listed so far are:<ul><li>I haven't quite got the hang of getting text & line control how I want them. Especially when I want everything one way with a few exceptions.</li><li>I'd like a way of creating anonymous propositions. That is I want to link two concepts but not have to describe how they are linked. You can leave the text for the proposition blank, but it doesn't look right and the connecting line is still jointed.</li><li>I'd like to see improved window management. When you have a bunch of maps open you need some way of herding them sensibly. Something like <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/expose/">Apple Exposé</a> would be perfect.</li><li>You can insert diagrams by making them the background of a node but it's quite fiddly and I've not been able to make it look good. I'd like to see more direct support for including diagrams (one idea that occurs is an auto-zooming icon: have a small iconic representation of the diagram in the node, which zooms to the full diagram on mouseover). I'm thinking now that nested nodes might also be a solution.</li><li>The collaborative facilities look as intriguing as they do baffling.</ul></p> <p>There are also features I haven't experimented with so far:<ul><li>The most intriguing is <em>nested nodes</em> which allow you to create expandable sub-maps. So far I've been using ability to cross-link maps to sub-divide a topic but nesting might be more effective. I'm not sure how it will work in the HTML version which uses image maps (bonus marks would be available if this was implemented with DHTML).</li><li>As well as adding sub-maps as resources you can link map nodes directly. The linked nodes will be included in both maps and a shortcut icon jumps from map to map.</li></ul></p> <p>I'll conclude my capsule review by giving CMapTools 9 out of 10. Oh, and did I mention it's free?</p> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002604.html