Professional Learning Network (A. O’Brien 2014)

Hello!

I found a new mind mapping tool for my second Personal Learning Network. I discovered a great resource for different brainstorm and mindmap tools. I  stopped at number nine, Bubbl.us. It was actually the first tool I checked out, unfortunately I can’t really tell you about any others. I plan to try a new tool again for my third PLN; not to say I didn’t like Bubbl.us.

Content wise, This time around I feel more comfortable listing people I haven’t known  very long. I looked up contacts for my new position working with CLA, and I added undergrads from my classes. It was nice to separate my professional contacts by industry; because before I had people from very different professional backgrounds crowded all together.

The tool was very easy to use–I didn’t Google, seek embedded help, or flounder once in the couple hours I spent working on this. BUT- It was tedious to consider aesthetics. My colors are arbitrarily assigned, and most of the child bubbles are pined haphazardly in a frustrated attempt to move the shapes.

Usability wise, I never really got the hang of the curser-bubble techniques to move, connect or add child bubbles. Although that didn’t stop me from one-by-one colorizing and sizing my connections. Every. Single. One. Well, actually… the orange Restaurant Connections were a default color, and some of the child bubbles would change color to match their parent(?) bubble. I may have been exaggerating a bit.

I hope you check out the tool. It’s great to chart interconnected mindaps.