MindMaple Program

Happy Sunday :)

I cannot believe how fast this summer is going and here I am still working and researching new things for next school year.  For me, school starts on August 20th, so I've got about a month before I have to go back.  Is it silly that I'm actually excited to go back this year?

I have gotten so addicted to reading teaching blogs that all these new ideas have me thrilled to go back and try them out!  Anyone else excited?

So.... here's my amazing find for the day.  I was over at Kleinspiration.com and she posted about this awesome program where students can make graphic organizers/mind maps.  The program is called MindMaple.  

Since I'm trying to get my students more into using computers and technology in the classroom, I decided to download the Lite version for Free and try it out.

Oh. My. Gosh!!!

It was SO much fun! :)  It was so interactive and easy to use.  Plus, after you're done you can print it out.  This would be a great to use with so many assignments... brainstorming for writing... main idea & details of a story.... a story map... discussing character traits and supporting them... wow the list can just continue on.

Here's what I did:

You have the main topic in the middle yellow box with the other topics around it in the green boxes.  Each green box then can have a topic of it's own with subtopics.  The + by the weather topic is what you use to collapse then expand the topic and details.  I had so much fun playing with the lines and curves to create relationships between the main topic and other topics.  The orange part is used to show a boundary of a group.

Now when I went to save I found out you can save it as different file types.  I saved this as a JPG, but you could have also saved it as a Microsoft Office file including Powerpoint.

If you doubt me about how easy it is to use Erin had her daughter use it.  Click here to see the results:

I also just wanted to say thank you to my 12 new followers for joining my blog.  I was so excited when I went from 15 to 27 in just 4 days!  You guys are amazing and I hope you enjoy my blog. :)  I appreciate all the kind words and support.  Thanks guys!  I'm planning for some type of giveaway when I reach 100 followers... although it seems a bit far off it's never too early to plan, that's my motto. :)