E-Learning

1. How does the tool relate to the topic of the week?
The tool MindMeister relates to the topic of the week because it can be used as a type of E-Learning tool. MindMeister is similar to a social learning environment because people can create maps of information relating to different topics which can then be shared with others so they can also learn about the topic. It can be used to organize presentations or papers so people can clearly define their points and what they are trying to teach people about.

2. What function does the tool serve?
MindMeister serves the purpose of an organizational and learning tool for people. It can be used to create different information webs about topics which people can then organize into a presentation or paper. You can also share these maps with others who use MindMeister so that you can collaborate together on the project if you are working together. MindMeister can be used for a variety of different projects and is useful for large groups because it is easy to create a map and share it with others so you can collaborate together on the project.

3. What did you find most interesting about the tool?
I found MindMeister to be rather interesting because it was easy to create maps and organize them in the various ways you want too. I found it rather interesting how you could adjust the way the web looked to however you wanted by just dragging the pieces around. I've seen other software and tools that make it much more difficult to customize the information web because you could only grab pieces in certain places but MindMeister was very quick and simple cause you just had to grab the piece to move and drag it.

4. What did you find most challenging?
There was not a lot of difficulty in using MindMeister that I experienced. The only difficult part I had was figuring out how to create the different branches at first but once I figured out it was tab and then enter it was very simple. MindMeister is set up very easily so it was not very difficult to figure out how to do things in it. It may be different though if you upgrade since you have more capabilities using the upgraded versions which might be difficult to use.

5. How does the tool improve or complicate communication?
I think MindMeister can significantly improve communication because it allows people to easily collaborate on ideas over long distances. A group of people can design a presentation or project of some kind without meeting very often by just organizing the entire project using MindMeister. MindMeister can complicate communication though because if the people only use MindMeister then some points of information may not be made clear in the web designed for the project so one person may have a different idea on what that web piece means compared to another person in the project so this could cause collaboration problems. This is probably unlikely though because I would expect people to use email or meet in person occasionally when working on a project of some kind.

6. What is your critique of your experience?
Overall I think MindMeister is a very interesting and useful tool. I enjoyed using it a lot because it was easy to figure out how to customize the maps and organize them however you wanted too. I think it would be incredibly useful to me for outlining papers before writing them and organizing them so I know exactly what I want to include and focus in different parts. I think MindMeister is a very useful tool for organizing and sharing information with people, especially since it can be made public so other people can view it whenever they want too. This would be especially useful in a college setting where a professor could post the map publicly so the students could access it whenever they wanted too.