This website is an easy tool to use to create mind maps. It's very intuitive to use in my opinion for students. An example is below I created for the cardiovascular system from a previous assignment.
The benefits of using this tool is that it is easy to use like I mentioned earlier. Students just have to type in their ideas in a box indenting if they wish to go to the next branch.
i.e.
Cardiovascular system
Blood
Platelets
Clotting
Students can also manually adjust where the boxes are placed by clicking and dragging on the actual visual itself so that it can be arranged how the wish. Students can also change the color of the boxes, the text, and save the mind map. This allows the students to make changes and add on more as a unit progresses and the students learn more. I would say that there are definitely more pros to cons in using this tool.
However there are still some downsides. A downside to this tool is that it can get crowded easily if you have lots of items to put on the mind map or if you have long sentences to put in. You can zoom in and out, but it gets hard to read still.
Would you use this tool as any kind of assessment? For example, might you check to see whether students have noted all of the right concepts associated with a topic? Or if they have placed details on the correct branches? Or would this be strictly a way for them to take digital notes?
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