We have known for some time that MindManager is a great tool for studying and teaching. Only recently have we had the resources to really start making our presence known in academia. In the past, our efforts to introduce our technology were perhaps a bit haphazard. Now it is becoming a concerted effort:
- This year Mindjet has brought on a number of new staff who will lead our work to build strong ties to teachers, students, administrators and academic resellers.
- We have also begun to create case studies that, so far, show how both faculty and administrators use MindManager to improve the delivery and administration of education.
- We are also starting to see blogs like theStudentTabletPC, DaveShearon and CarlStormer.com discuss the academic benefits of MindManager in particular, or mind mapping (or concept mapping, which is close) in general.
- And just last week we announced that we are partnering with Douglas Stewart Company, one of the largest distributors of educational software, to distribute Mindjet’s new MindManager® Basic 6 and Pro 6 software applications to more than 4,500 academic resellers and 150 college stores in the United States and Canada.
We are really excited about this because we believe very strongly that mapping, which actually began years ago as a way to improve memory retention and as a note-taking methodology, has a lot to offer students. A few years ago I had the pleasure of visiting the Samuel P. Gompers Vocational Technical High School in New York City to see how teachers there were using MindManager in the classroom. It was pretty wild. Students in a U.S. History class were mapping out our nation’s past. Electronics students were using it to learn complex electrical theory. And the principal and vice-principal could already see the results: Better grades and more student excitement about learning. At the university level, Michael Ruffini is using MindManager to make it easier and less expensive for schools to create online learning.
Any thoughts on MindManager or mapping in general and education? I’d love to hear them!