Medium Specificity - Coggle
Coggle is a great medium for expressing stream-of-counscious-esque thoughts and ideas in a fluid but organized way. It's easy to manipulate in such a way that connecting ideas can remain near each other. You can add images to the mind map, as well as links to websites you find that relate to your thoughts or enhance your research. You can even bold, italicize, and underline words to add emphasis where you see fit. As far as a mind map goes, it's very interactive and easy to use. There are, however, limitations.
One cannot use this medium to easily create an image of their own. My first link is to a mind map that I created based off of joy, demonstrating the affordances of this medium. It clearly let me connect my thoughts in a way that was meaningful to me and that I understood. If I wanted to collaborate with another author, I could share the project with them and they would be able to contribute in real time at the same time as me. I can export the mind map as a PDF with clickable links, as a PNG image, as a flowchart file, as a plain-text file, and as an MM file. It's very compatible if you want to import it into another project. The link can be shared with others, and it's easily edited and updated. Various colors keep the chart visually appealing and additionally organized, and the possibility of adjusting the branches keeps them clear and un-jumbled.
On the other hand, my second link is to an image of tulips that I attempted to create with the mind map software. This piece demonstrates the limitations of the medium. While it's great for mind maps and flowcharts, that's essentially all it's good for. Anyone looking at my image could probably tell that it's meant to represent some sort of flower, but the label "tulips" is probably the real identifier. I also originally tried making a self-portrait, but it was too difficult because the lines aren't actually that malleable in the free version that I was using. This medium is a bunch of colorful lines, but that's really about it.
I love your creativity in attempting to try several things, just to see what might come of it. You never know what will happen when you choose to be creative! I also loved that you chose joy to create a map of, there are so many fantastic things to explore there. The dictionary definitions are fascinating to read and compare but, at the end of it all it seems like when you wrote times you experience joy, that means so much more to you than a definition in some old book. Really creative work!
ReplyDeleteBeth, I love that you have now introduced me to a very useful mindmap website! It seems like a great way to work through thoughts and ideas when brainstorming for papers, projects, etc. I really like how you used lots of different features on your "joy" mindmap to show what Coggle could do! I also like you worked out the limitations with the tulips...very creative!
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