Posts Tagged ‘mindmapping’

Participatory Mapping

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
An interesting debate (among many) in yesterday’s AACE Global USocial Media Seminar around mind and concept mapping. Whilst Dave Cormier dismissed mapping as a personal and potentially isolating learning activity, George Siemens was keen to promote its potential for knowledge sharing. I support this perspective yet am somewhat confounded by the reality of its limitations. The ability to create a map and simply put it on the web as a PDF is not a particularly interactive process and whilst the growth of mapping web apps (such as MindMeister and Gliffy) proviide new opportunities for collaboration, they still fall way short in enabling the potential of mapping as a fully participatory medium. Current mapping technologies and practices are unfortunately just too immature,
Multiple mapping notations (mind and concept mapping have fundamentally different psychological and theoretical foundations), and the lack of a standard mapping format (numerous mapping softwares and web apps were suggested by the audience yesterday) mean online map-sharing resources tend to be software specific (such as Biggerplate or the forthcoming cMappers). I want to be able to search for content across integrated mapping resources, navigate easily through mapping levels and hierarchies, take sections from different maps to add my own etc. in other ways, use maps in the way I use textual content systems to navigate, annotate and access the Web. This is dependent not only on the technological standardization of formats and architectures, but in establishing common practices in the way we map, how we link things, and how we develop visual knowledge networks.
The next seminar in this excellent series is at 9pm (Eastern US time) on October 13th.

An interesting debate (among many) in yesterday’s AACE Global U Social Media Seminar around mind and concept mapping. Whilst Dave Cormier dismissed mapping as a personal and potentially isolating learning activity, George Siemens was keen to promote its potential for knowledge sharing. I support this perspective yet am somewhat deflated by the reality of its limitations. The ability to create a map and simply put it on the Web as a PDF or whatever is not a particularly interactive process and whilst the growth of mapping web apps (such as MindMeister and Gliffy) provide new opportunities for collaboration, they still fall way short in enabling the potential of mapping as a fully participatory medium. Current mapping technologies and practices are unfortunately just too immature.

Multiple mapping notations (mind and concept mapping have fundamentally different psychological and theoretical foundations), and the lack of a standard mapping format (numerous mapping softwares and web apps were suggested by the audience yesterday) mean online map-sharing resources tend to be disparate and software specific (such as Biggerplate or the forthcoming cMappers). I want to be able to search for content across integrated mapping resources, navigate easily through multiple mapping levels and hierarchies, select isolated sections from different maps to add to my own etc. – in other words; use maps in the way I use numerous text-based systems to navigate, annotate and contribute to the Web. This capability would not only depend on the standardization of formats and architectures, but in establishing common practices in the way we map, link things, and  develop visual knowledge networks.

The next seminar in this excellent series is at 9pm (Eastern US time) on October 13th.

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