Free Resources from the Net for (Special) Education

Welcome to this Treasure Chest of Free Stuff.

If you are visual learner, and if you appreciate a convenient way of organizing your thoughts in a schematic format, you will want to have a look at the program I’m focusing on today. I’m filing this one on my Productivity page.

Free Mind (downloadable program) is known as mind-mapping software. Wikipedia defines a mind map as “…a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. It is used to generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, and decision making.” This is exactly what Free Mind enables its user to do on a computer. Ideas and concepts can be graphically represented and webbed on screen.

The potential applications of mind maps for both students and teachers are unlimited, especially for those with a bent toward visual learning. Free Mind is free open source software that enables the user to create and share mind maps with relative ease. The program allows for considerable flexibility by offering a range of useful options. The user interface is straightforward, but built-in keyboard commands provide direct access from the keyboard for virtually all functions of the program.

Although the software comes with helpful and well organized tutorial material, the learning curve required suggests to me that for most students it would probably not be appropriate to introduce this software before the senior secondary level. On the other hand, primary school teachers might find this software invaluable in the preparation of units of study and for the organization of material to be covered over the course of a year.

To download Free Mind, go to http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page (Java Runtime Environment must also be installed since this software is written in Java.)

This program runs in Windows, Mac and Linux.