I think, cMap tools is more optimized for the later stage of thinking where you are about to show off something to others. It does not at all have a “notes” pane immediately next to each node on the map, as PersonalBrain has. So in this respect, my tool resembles more PersonalBrain where you can ponder a topic again and again.

PersonalBrain’s graphic is impressive and beautiful and creatively stimulating, but it gets quickly overwhelming when it comes to network structures that are not tree-like or star-like. IMHO this restriction is not so strong in cMaps: Although the strict guidelines by Novak prescribe a top-down tree, as well, cMaps can much easier be used for true, nonhierarchical networks (i.e. networks where for some nodes it is really not yet decided if they belong more to one or more to another category). While PersonalBrain’s dynamic layout can make kind of “sea-sick”, cMap’s static topology layout is more like a cartographic map where you won’t lose the compass orientation too quickly. In this respect, my tool is more like cMap than like PersonalBrain.

And then there is the difference of size and scope, which was mentioned in the fall TKT class: cMap is like a “snapshot” of a PersonalBrain. In this respect, my tool is more like cMaps, it’s not for long-term storage of many items but for immediate overview of a given number of topical items.

So my tool is like a cMap tool, plus a notes facility like that of PersonalBrain (plus, of course, many left deficiencies!). VUE has both the concept map and the notes (albeit a bit hidden in a separate window), but this program, in turn, lacks an easy import. So, each of the comparable programs lack only a little important feature, and I hope one of them will soon add it.

It was not designed after some theory research. But it proved to be very useful, and we can “rationalize” (see Stephen Downes’ presentation at minute 27:55 / slide 13) quite interesting reasons for its power.

The two panes seem to cater to two different operating modes (visual overview in the left pane — verbal detail in the right), and the extreme immediacy of the juxtaposition minimizes the distance between these two modes.

It minimizes the abstraction that occurs on traditional concept maps when we “wrap” or “collapse” a concept into a term. To re-expand such an abstracted idea (to “unwrap” it), we need to start a dedicated goal-directed brain process (even if it is just half a second), and this hurts the “broad vigilant overview”. But if the detail text is always immediately present, we need not really leave the overview mode. So we can fully leverage the great human visual imaging capability, and the map’s affordance that we may offload parts of the precious working memory, the “visuo-spatial sketchpad”.

This is roughly the rationalization of the surprising power of the tool, but this power needs to be experienced, not just argued for with design consideration.

I did not invent it, but incidentally found its great affordance in an abandoned version of the larger framework of DeepaMehta. I remixed a few thousand of its 50,000 lines of code with a few hundred lines of added functionality.

It seems not much different from other application. In particular, the “coordinated view” principle is long known from email clients, which offer a message list and the message preview simultaneously. And mapping applications are numerous, but I have not found any that reasonably work with non-hierarchical nodes and offer import of highlightable detail texts.

It’s not a universal information management tool, and it’s not for the final polishing of a presentation to be shown to others. (But once the ideas are in place, it is easy to redraw the picture into a pretty Cmap or PersonalBrain). The most typical application stage is the short phase between stuff collection and the outline. (But this is the crucial step that most academic writing guides just skip by stating “Then structure your content”.)

I won’t be disappointed that it’s not for everybody’s taste. Probably it is not even for all “visualizers” because Kosslyn showed that spatial visualisers are much different than object visualizers (with verbalizers being in between). And maybe it needs a bit of some synaesthetical “disorder” (like people who smell colors) to “see” conceptual proximity like spatial proximity.

So I am prepared for any honest critique.

Later more.

OK, a concept or an idea is unsatisfactory if it applies to only one single concrete situation. But do we want it to apply to multiple concrete situations or to none ? Abstract = “drawn away” from worldly affairs, suggests “none”. Metaphor, by contrast, connects two concrete, embodied things and shows a common, general pattern of how they are related. (In particular, pattern recognition relies very much on our ability to find salient, outstanding objects among a backdrop full of statistically familiar objects. And as far as I have understood McGilchrist, it employs much right hemisphere integration instead of left hemisphere abstractions.)

I was lucky to have a math teacher in 1965 who emphasized this power of general applicability to us 7th-graders, while others were trying to curry favor with us by pretending immediate relevance of their discipline, or by drumming their pale abstract symbols into us until they would become as familiar as if they were concrete. Focussing on a false tangibility, IMHO, does more harm than benefit. And in particular, the tangible assessment results, and the intimidating concreteness of grades, distract very much from abstract thinking.

As a first response I think it has to do with constraints: feeling constrained by other ways of expression, and overcoming these constraints by spatial visualizations.

Why sounds “linear” thinking so deterrent to me, in contrast to “lateral” ? Because when I think of linear, I picture myself in a long depressing corridor

where many steps are mercilessly required before a subgoal is reached that allows me a next step, to the next subgoal.

Long linear forums threads are an example that often feel like this: I have to read through all of the posts to understand the hidden connections among them. More generally, language itself is linear, and as Robert Horn says, it is a funnel, and rich embodied impressions have to be squeezed into it.

The cramping contraints are also perceivable when I am forced to use a hierarchical order instead of a more liberal network arrangement, or if an obtrusive user interface urges me to connect a new topic to some existing branch of a mindmap (as even Mindmanager does, even with floating topics). This aversion does not mean that I assign many topics to more than one pigeonhole. But I need to be able to do this, otherwise I feel just this strangulating constraint. (And no, using tags instead of categories does not help, because the long chaotic list of tags will end up in a long, alphabetic, deterrent linear list again!).

Imagine a Shishi Odoshi (video on YouTube, image by hoffheins):

The emergent learning is like the ongoing flow which is typical for the largest part of time, before the tipping point of the seesaw is reached. By contrast, the threshold, or “Ah-ha” moment, is only the short point in time where the spectacular, loud, recognizeable event happens.

Isn’t the focus on the spectacular measurable moment a distraction on the wrong part of the emergence process? Isn’t the focus on Ah-ha moments also, in a way, restricting itself to a certain kind of knowledge: Knowledge that must be (and can be) understood in a predefined, unambiguous way, like a jig-saw puzzle piece that snaps in?

Expressed in connectivist terms, the focus on thresholds and liminal points, or portals, is looking at given points on a graph rather than at slowly strengthening connections, at places on a map rather than roads, or at nodes rather than edges. Of course, edges and nodes are inseparable. But I am uncomfortable with the emphasis, and with the idea that learning could so directly be recognized, measured, caused. I would merely hope to indirectly induce its gradual strengthening, growing, emerging.

It was not open in the sense of open access, but very open in the sense of open minds. And in particular, the diversity component was at least as strong as in the (c-)MOOCs that I got used to in the last few years. It was a great experience to see how differently the think tools work for such different people.

Here are the most promising replacement candidates and why I dismissed them.

• Mindmaps? In all programs I know, the hierarchical focus is too obtrusive, even if they support cross links and free-floating topics.
• Cmap by an HCI institute called ihmc.us. I was short of enthusiastic after discovering how easily the few strange quirks could be overcome,
  
  in particular the (ideological?) urge to label one’s connectors by “propositions”. With a little bit of routine, I could quickly draw countless many arrows without the recommended labels. Almost countless. Because whenever the map became full, the shift+drag sequence failed increasingly often. In the end, I sometimes needed 7-8 attempts, feeling like obsessed, to draw a single arrow without the damned proposition placeholder saying “????”. A conspiracy theory would probably suggest that they count my simple arrows and after a certain amount, exert some coercion for some arrows obeying their taste. But probably the coding is just not robust and scalable. But once got angry, you won’t tolerate the next patronizing quirk: Arrows’ heads are silently ignored when sloping downwards. Nobody responds to the forum question “What is the idea behind the default arrowheads style? “. Probably the project is abandoned.
• Topicmaps with Deepamehta, the opensource software which I have often enthused about in this blog? The great visual concept is abandoned; they are focussing on general “frameworks”.
• iMapping.info? If you don’t know this tool, give it a try. It pushes the boundaries of traditional zooming. But this also means sacrificing much visual flexibility.

Mindmapping, conceptmapping, topicmapping, iMapping — which one will be significantly improved? Probably none because mapping applications don’t fit on tablets?

The first problem was that blog posts are much different than articles: Blog posts are tightly tied into contemporary external contexts and densely connected to each other, which means that they are easily accessible within that context, but much harder as time goes by. Other articles are more independent of time and context, reusable and “sterile” [Downes 2012], p. 9), because they are wrapped and armored with plenty of introductory and concluding statements. So to speak, they carry their “root ball” with themselves like a plant from the tree nursery which is going to be repotted. By contrast, blog posts are more comparable to rhizomes that cannot easily be pulled out without their neighboring ones.

So it took me many attempts over many weeks, to find a way how to select connections that would ideally allow for a coherent narrative.

Taking the tags that connected two linked blog posts, led me to the futile stage 2 where even tools like NetDraw did not help to untangle the felted mesh. Next I tried to isolate a chain of linked tags, see what looks like a ring road in stage 3. In stage 4 I sacrificed many connections and put up with the idea of a hierarchical ranking of tags and backbone of links. But I still could not find labels for the emerging topics. (I learned some hidden benefits of Cmap: After exporting the links between my posts, “propositions as text”, I could transfer them via Excel to Access, count them, and transfer them via database queries and proposition import to a smaller Cmap again — stage 5). Finally, I put boxes (Cmap “containers”) around my unnamed clusters, and let go the idea of short label words, and contented myself with header lines that mention multiple tags. This made my database manipulations for producing the HTML output more difficult, but such a little technical problem is more welcome than the big conceptual problem mentioned above.

But the disappointing thing about it is that it looks very pale. George likened it to Google’s “Knowledge Graph” (approx. 11:05 h) which, IMHO, would at most be a semantic web type factual knowledge, a disambiguation of terms, or binary answers to questions that are either incorrect or correct, or jig-saw puzzle pieces — which is far away from what the original neuronal metaphor suggested: emerging conceptual connections of varying strengths.

For me, this original powerful idea is most impressively realized by visualisation apps that allow all sorts of connector lines (e.g. thick ones, thin, dashed, or dotted ones) or even no line at all, just positioning the icons close to each other. It is amazing how underdeveloped our current tools are in this respect. In IHMC’s Cmap, it is a pain to switch to dashed connectors and back. So I still have to maintain my powerpoint 2003…