MindMeister 3 Rolls Out

I just received an email that MindMeister 3 has been released with a a large number of new features and tweaks to the user interface. Here is a list of the new features and changes in MindMeister 3:

• Task Management

  Many more features for easier task management in MindMeister, including start date and duration, email notifications, iCalendar feeds, WunderTasks and a task overview from all maps.

• Search and filter, better tags

  The new map search - you'll find it in your map list view - makes managing many maps a lot easier. You can search for titles and contents, and even use Find in maps (CTRL-F). Also, managing tags was enhanced with a new overflow dropdown.

• Resize ideas and wrap

  Overlong idea labels always created problems. In the new release you can now resize them via drag and drop, and your maps will also keep the wrappings when exported e.g. to PDF or as image.

• History View

  We completely revamped the version history to make viewing and replaying the collaborative changes of a mind map a useful and fun experience. Clicking on the coloured bullets starts "replay" mode. See also our tutorial video.

• WikiMaps

  You can now turn any public map into a WikiMap. This will make it editable for everybody (well, everybody who has a MindMeister account, to avoid spamming). Quite useful to gather input from many people at once!

• Import text files

  In addition to Freemind and MindManager^TM formats, you can now also import plain text files into MindMeister.

• Emailing attachments

  Geisesblitz Email now supports attachments which will be inserted as attachments to your ideas into MindMeister.

• Many more key shortcuts

  Our users say they love them, so we've added quite a few more for common operations. See a complete list.

• Other enhancements

  New user interface, revamped "My Account" section, Offline mode for Safari, recommendations in map view, new export dialog and options, better printing (via PDF), clone public maps, larger note previews and much more.

The Joy of Teaching

There is no better feeling when you are teaching to see your students in perfect sync with you as the lesson or demonstration unfolds. In many ways it almost feels like a symphony of sorts- there I am teaching and I can watch the expression and the heads moving in unison as they grasp the ideas that I am espousing. Pretty powerful stuff to say the least. Today was one of those days where everything just flowed. I have been introducing my students to the power of videoconferencing and challenging them to think of some ways to use it in the classroom. In this vein, I introduced them to two of my favorite videoconferencing applications Skype and Oovoo.

For the first part of the class, I connected with my friend Laura at Inspiration, Inc. and my class had a chance to meet her via videoconferencing. We had a very good connection and the class marveled in just how easy it was to accomplish the connection. After Laura introduced herself, we connected via Glance so that we could share her screen. Laura and I have done this before with some other classes but it was the first time we were using Glance to share her screen. Using the latest version of Glance and my account I was able to Start a session and view Laura's screen. As I have noted one of the things that I like most about Glance is just how easy it is to use. Today was a perfect example- within seconds of starting the session, Laura's screen was up and my class was viewing her computer. Laura did a great job of demonstrating InspireData which continues to impress me. Just this past week I modeled for a fifth grade teacher how to set up a mock election by using the eSurvey feature within InspireData. Glance was really fast and the screen redraws were nearly instantaneous. It was a great session and Glance worked flawlessly. My students were very excited to participate in the webinar and began to see just how these tools could be used together to deliver professional development and instruction.

After the short webinar- I had a chance to show them OoVoo and connected with Philip Robertson from OoVoo. We had a great conversation and the students remarked on the clarity of the image and the quality of the audio. We also had a chance to record the session which is another benefit of OoVoo and I had a chance to replay it for them. The session was a big hit and once again Philip came through and provided some great information and his great sense of humor. In in all it was a great day of teaching!

eLearning Learning Launched

I'm happy to announce the launch of eLearning Learning. This is the beginning of a community portal where the community will help to collect and organize the best content from blogs and web sites. The goal is to create a place where it's relatively easy to find current content and highly relevant content surrounding eLearning.

To be clear eLearning Learning is a jump off point. The content comes from other places. Right now these are mostly posts from bloggers, but you will soon see other kinds of content appearing. The bottom line is that eLearning Learning is trying to help find and navigate the world of eLearning.

I've selected bloggers who I've been reading and felt provide value on interesting topics.

The following blogs are helping me today to launch this and I've listed a few unsolicited comments on their experience so far.

• Tracy Hamilton - Discovery through eLearning

"simple"

• Collin Kromke - Web 2.0 Work

"I'm LOVING the way the label widget works!"

• Kevin Jones - Engaged Learning

"I like your widget a lot. Kind of a linear tag cloud."

• Wendy Wickham - In The Middle of the Curve

"looks pretty cool"

You will see that these bloggers and soon other bloggers listed as Featured in their blogs. They will show the following badge:



You will also see that most featured bloggers are including the eLearning Learning Organizer Widget. This widget is in my sidebar and it shows the topics that I blog about. As a blogger, this helps me keep my content organized, which has always been a bit challenging.

You might visit a few of the blogs listed above to see the topics they are writing about. For example, looking at top tools:

Wendy

• Moodle (45)
• Captivate (40)
• LMS (33)

Tracy

• LMS (23)
• Second Life (6)
• Twitter (6)

Mine are:

• Wiki (108)
• LMS (83)
• Social Network (57)

Boy, I talk about Wikis a lot.

I hope that you will find eLearning Learning to be a valuable resource. I welcome any thoughts or feedback on the system.

Ginger Spell -New Writing Software

While doing some searches for new writing software a couple of months ago, I came across a rather interesting web site from Ginger Software. The company was tauting a new software application called Ginger Spell that works within Microsoft Word to provide students with writing disabilities support in the area of spelling and grammar. At the present time Ginger Spell beta does not include grammar support but will be added when the applications ships. Ginger Spell is unique in that it assist students in producing error free text right within Microsoft Word using very sophisticated algorithms. Ginger Spell installs within Microsoft Word 2003 and Word 2007 and provides a window that allows students to view the suggested corrections. As much as I am a big fan of word prediction there are a number of students with writing disabilities that do not do well with the tool- here is where Ginger Spell comes in. Students can write within Microsoft Word as they always do and once they are done can utilize the power of Ginger Spell to process their writing. Ginger Spell has the uncanny ability to make the right correction and produce an error free finished product- which is ideal for students with writing disabilities. I have had a chance to beta test Ginger Spell and am very impressed with the underlying technology. To use Ginger Spell you will need to be running Windows and have access to Microsoft Word 2003 or 2007 along with a connection to the internet.

I like the post processing features and I believe that many students will find this a more natural way for them to check their work. At the present time, Ginger Spell does not support text to speech but this something that the developer will be adding when it is officially released. I found the user interface very intuitive and rather straightforward. Making changes to the text was very easy and Ginger Spell in 90% of the cases made the right suggestion without me having to make any changes. Give it a try by downloading the beta now of Ginger Spell.

Online Language Training

Over on the Big Question, we are discussing Network Feedback which is basically how can you reach out and get help around a question. Almost the same time I posted the question, I received a question from a reader around Language Learning.

The person works in a corporation in Turkey and is looking to find eLearning to teach employees English. I know there's a lot going on in online language training. In our brief exchange, I mentioned EduFire and Myngle - but the response is that these are more aimed at consumer rather than corporate.

Any suggested solutions?

And, if you have thoughts on how you would go about finding answers to this inquiry, you can use that as your answer to the Big Question. :)

LinkedIn Facebook Twitter - Different Connection Style

As a result of my recent change in my Approach to LinkedIn Connections, I've actually met quite a few people who read my blog, but I don't believe had ever commented. They were comfortable connecting with me via LinkedIn and since it offers mutual value it was worth the effort. It truly does feel like a (virtual) networking event.

Interestingly, one of the people who connected to me suggested we might want to do the same on Facebook and Twitter. This really got me thinking. I described my approach to LinkedIn only having recently changed where I view my connections now as really being more of a combination of:

• PANs = Potentially Active Network
• CANs = Currently Active Network
• FANs = Formerly Active Network

I used to think of LinkedIn (and LinkedIn themselves suggest this is how to think of it) as containing only people who I have a deeper relationship with (CANs and FANs). However, for some of my primary uses Finding Expertise via LinkedIn and LinkedIn Answers to Get Help, it makes more sense to connect to people who it will be good to be connected with in the future (PANs).

However, this is not really the case with the way I use Facebook and Twitter. Both of these tools are much more conversational tools for me.

In Twitter, I have people that I follow in order to listen into their conversation. If you try to listen to too many, or if you listen to people who you don't really have a relationship with, you will experience what I describe in Twitter Mass Follow - Nevermind - basically it feels like noise.

In Facebook, it's much the same. I have my friends who I want to get together with, see what they are doing, have conversations with.

Both Twitter and Facebook really are my CANs and FANs. In some ways, the goal on both is to stay more closely connected with FANs to keep the relationship alive. Something I must say that I'm not good at. I can think of a bunch of folks who I really like, get along really well with and who I won't talk to unless something unusual happens. It's nice when we can get a bit of that ongoing conversation via Facebook or Twitter.

Yes, I could theoretically open up to a much larger network and somewhat ignore the noise. This would get the advantage of being able to broadcast. But, it's really not the way I use these tools today.

Now, it took me 2-3 years to change my thinking about LinkedIn. So, with all fairness, it could be that I've not evolved my thinking about Twitter and Facebook.

When I step back and see the message, I'm sending, I'm a bit worried:

If we are connecting on LinkedIn based on a very loose relationship, maybe we'll have more conversations and get to the point where it makes sense to connect on Facebook and Twitter as well.

Does that sound bad?

Brian's Update

It has been a busy couple of weeks along with being under the weather which has made it difficult for me to blog. I trust that I will be back on schedule next week with some posts, so look for them. It really is a juggling act getting all that needs to get done-but I'm pushing through.

Just today I mailed out an issue of Inclusion Times that was past due and worked on the Fall issue. For the past 4 years I have written and published Inclusion Times, which is geared towards educators who are working with students with disabilities. Over the past two year, I have expanded the coverage to include new and innovative technologies that are important for educators to know about. Because it is a traditional newsletter that goes out to individual educators and libraries I have printed, collated, and mailed out this newsletters via the post office. This process is more time consuming than you can imagine and because it is a niche newsletter I decided this year that I would produce Inclusion Times in an electronic version (PDF file) that my subscribers could download. This will not only save me time, energy but a will allow me to get the newsletter out that much quicker. To get a free sample of Inclusion Times click here or you can view the embedded PDF right within the blog post. If you like what you see let me know and I can get you set up with a subscription. I will let you know how this process works- in any case this is the way of the future!