OSAPAC has announced the release of a new Mind Mapping tool, called Mindomo, that affords some exciting new possibilities for demonstrations of learning and collaboration.
This is a web application that students will access through a code that a teacher sets up in an easy process that is attached to their School Board email address. I’ve had a chance to explore this tool and I love the way that it’s very easy to edit and add media like pictures and youtube videos to enhance student work. There is also a great presentation mode, which allows students to create a presentation by zooming in on parts of their mind maps. Templates are also included that provide editable maps in a variety of educational topics.
One of the best features of Mindomo is the fact that students can collaborate on their maps and share them out in many different formats. Along with this collaborative feature comes a revision history so that collaborators and teachers can see when and how often people are working on their mapping projects — you can even receive notifications to get emails when changes are made to the maps.
No tool is perfect, and Mindomo is continuing to develop and add new features all the time. There are a couple of limitations I’ve found, and using the following work-arounds has helped:
1) Mindomo does not have an outline view in the same way that you might expect to see in other Graphic Organizers. You might be used to creating a mind map graphically and then, with the click of a button, seeing a textual representation of your thinking to organize main ideas and supporting details, which students could then use with other writing tools like Google Docs or Word. With Mindomo, you’ll want to export your map as a .txt file, and then indent, number and add to your text document in a way that suits you.
2) Adding labels to a connector link turns your mind map into a concept map. With Mindomo, you can ‘add a label’ to a connector link when you use floating topics. There is a quick create option for creating maps efficiently, you just can’t delete the connectors (or relationships) or add labels to them using this mode. 
Resources
Folks on the OSAPAC Committee have created a Public Folder where you can go for information about how to get access to Mindomo along with video tutorials to help you get started. You can access those resources on the OSAPAC Website by clicking the Mindomo button currently on the Home Page or by going directly to the public folder here.
Learning Zone 