Using Comapping for Workshops

As much as I enjoy the power of desktop mind mapping applications and use them all of time in the work that I do, one of the tools that I am relying on more these days is Comapping, an online mind mapping collaboration tool. Comapping can be accessed from any computer and browser that is connected to the Internet and gives me the flexibility to organize my ideas, add hyperlinks as well as attachments. Comapping does a great job allowing you to share your maps when they are done and I have been taking advantage of this feature for years now when I teach my graduate courses. For each class I create an interactive agenda with Comapping and then publish it to my Moodle classroom account for all my students to access.

Recently I have done a number of workshops and needed a quick way for my participants to be able to jump from web site to web site to view the contents. Using Comapping I was able to create the agenda embed the hyperlinks which made the day go so much more smoothly for me. Publishing your Comapping maps to the web is really quite simple and easy to do and when you are done you are given a unique URL that you can then pass out to your students. Because the URL is rather long, I generally log into my Bit.ly account shorten it and customize the link so that when I get to the workshop I just have to give out the shortened URL.

Comapping is also unique in that it allows you to embed your attachments that your participants can access from the map.  In the example below you will see that I have embedded a number of Quick Reference Cards for the SOLO training I have coming up. This will make it easy for my participants to access these reference materials on the day of the training as well as when they are back in their classroom. You will also see that there are live links to the Don Johnston Website for additional support videos that can be quickly accessed from the Comapping map. Using this technique not only saves me from printing costs and paper, but models for teachers what is possible as we move from analog to a digital  materials. So interact with the Comapping map below and let me know you thoughts about using Comapping in the work that you do. If you are interested in learning how you can do this shoot me an email.