MindMeister

1. The topic discussed this week was E-learning and it was reinforced by the social media tool MindMeister.  E-learning is the use of all forms of electronic teaching and learning to present information in a new and customized way in order to address the various learning styles of students.  One way of thinking of E-learning is by examining the Cognitive theory of multimedia learning.  This theory operates on the basic assumption that audio and visual information are processed separately and that both of these channels have a finite amount of space in them.  Meaning E-learning tries to combine audio and visuals in order to fully stimulate the mind, but not giving too much information to avoid overloading the channels and creating an overflow of information. MindMeister allows users to create mind-maps where they can succinctly lay out their thoughts in order to get a better understand of a topic.
2. The main benefit that MindMeister serves is collaboration and note-taking.  Here MindMeister allows many users to work on the same project at the same time and to see their changes happening in real time.  This feature gives the benefit of being in the same room with a group collaborating on a project, but instead of traveling to an agreed upon location users simply have to log-in and begin typing.  Beyond the collaboration benefits provided by MindMeister, this tool allows you the ability to lay out your thoughts and ideas.  I can not tell you have beneficial this process has been for me when it comes to planning essays.  If I had known of this tool a year ago, I would have saved myself the trouble of trying to make a good essay skeleton by hand.
3. In my opinion the most interesting feature of MindMeister is the live update capability.  During my in-class presentation of E-learning I found it very intriguing just how fast the map was able to update when other students in the class made changes.  Additionally I liked how organized that feature was with the color coding.  This feature now eliminates the need to email versions of a document back and forth between two parties in order to get the changes complete.  Past the live updates I also thought that it was really cool that there was a feature which allowed you to watch what you had done in the past in order to see your thought processes and also to revert in need be.  No longer will you have you rely on the inefficient ctrl-z.
4. To be completely honest I did not find much of anything very challenging when it comes to interfacing with MindMeister.  The only aspect of this tool that took a little bit of figuring out was how to add new branches to the map. Once I learned that you could use tab+enter, or insert, or clicking the plus at the top left I no longer had trouble with that.  Although when it comes to large-scale outline on MindMeister it is difficult to try and condense the map into a smaller print-screen.  Although MindMeister is made to be used strictly online, it makes sense that when trying to translate it to paper it is inefficient.
5. This tool allows users to share the map with their friends via email or via Facebook.  Additionally when sharing the map the creator can decide whether or not to allow the invitee to simply view or edit the map.  I believe that these features allow communication to go very smoothly between users.  However, on the paid version of MindMeister there is a chat function which will only serve to make the process of collaboration and communication even easier.
6. On a whole MindMeister is by far my most favorite social media tool that we have discussed in class. I am not just saying this because I presented on it, but because I do not see a downside to this tool.  I see only educational benefits, and improvements to communication.  This tool has even been seen worthy enough to be used to create outlines for an entire classes's final papers.  This tool is something that I have been doing throughout my career as a student and now I have an online interface for it.  Being as passionate for technology as I am I do not have to tell you how excited I am to find this tool, and I will continue to use this tool for my foreseeable future.