A Review of Three Mind Mapping Sites

I reviewed Bubbl.us, Education Oases, and ExploraTree. All three sites are free which is a plus. All three sites deal with mind maps or organizers.
Bubble.us is the most basic of the three. There is a starting parent bubble and by clicking or tabbing on the bubble or any resulting bubble, sibling or child bubbles can be formed and connected to the other bubbles. Bubbles can be different colors, text can be added to bubbles, bubbles can be moved, and as the mouse falls on different features contained in a bubble, the feature is explained. The mind maps can be saved as an image and printed, e-mailed, embedded in a website or blog, and shared. One other feature Bubble.us has is multi-lingual support. I think this is a fun and easy to use site students can use to create their own mind maps.
Education Oases is a website that has 58 ready made graphic organizers. All of the organizers are in PDF format and therefore require Adobe Reader to view and print them. There are five categories of organizers and some of them allow text entry. I liked the organizers that I reviewed. I was not able to find one that I could edit and I was able to add text to only a couple that I reviewed. I suppose this could be a limitation. All in all I consider this to be a very useful and easy to use site for instructors.
Exploratree is a website that contains a variety of ready made thinking guides that can be easily and broadly edited to meet your needs. If desired, you can also create your own guide. To use this site Flash must be installed on your computer. There is a wonderful help tool included as well as how-to videos. When working with a template, there are three different modes you can work in—the Create mode, the Do It mode, and the Show It mode. Comments can be added to a guide, a guide can be sequenced, guides can be shared and the site supports collaboration. Of the three sites, I liked this one the best. It’s easy to use and has a lot to offer.