ETEC 522 – May 2012

Roundup for Week 9 Visual-Intensive Learning

Thanks to all our colleagues that contributed to the activity and the discussion that has led to the market research for this educational venture. Below is a summary of all your contributions that we added to our presentation.  Thanks again for a wonderful week!

Our final version of the presentation can be viewed at http://wiki.ubc.ca/Visual_Intensive_Learning_-_Mind_Mapping_for_K-12_Learning

Hi David, Please note that we have left the presentation open on Cacoo for anyone to contribute, however, we have saved a back-up copy in case of any future corruption.

Market Research Based on Peers Discussions in ETEC 522

Most of our peers that participated in the above presentation agreed that online digital mind maps provided considerable educational value to any curriculum including being used as organizers, and for note taking, review and reflection within an easily shared and manipulated space.  They preferred tools that provided simple, user friendly affordances as well as more complex features.  Although not all agreed that shared or collaborative mind maps were educationally valid [since mind mapping represents your mind’s organization], others believed that they provided opportunities for reflection on fellow peers perspectives and knowledge.

From a venture perspective, it appears that our peers prefer mind mapping tools that are commonly used within the MET program including Prezi, CMap, and Vue.  Their preference for these tools may be based on exposure and familiarity suggesting that gaining a piece of the market may be partially dependent on selling these tools to universities that are training teachers. 

Although an overexposed market, many identified the desire for features that enabled combining, comparing and analyzing maps.  Since these features don’t presently exist in any useful form, a product that could offer these analytical affordances would save considerable time and effort for assessment and add greater educational value to mind mapping practices.  A value added proposition may be to offer these analytics as a pay feature to a free product.  Just to qualify this approach to mind mapping evaluation, some expressed concern that maps are difficult to assess as they embody personal knowledge representations.  As a visual tool, many of our peers suggested increasing the visual value and offering features that enabled the inclusion of video, applets, and animations rather than just links.  Other issues consisted of considerable lag time, conflicting shared editing, privacy, access to technology and viewing/ navigating large maps.

Overall, mind maps are considered a valuable educational tool with some considerable pain points that if addressed could offer valuable venture possibilities. 

Cheers, Steve, Ping, Hussain, Sherman, Dani