This week's reading assignment in New Learning was all about politics (or at least, that's how it felt...but that may also be due to my fascination with Ken Burns' documentary on the Roosevelts this week). I have to admit, I'm not a fan of political intrusions into my pedagogy, although I do see the ramifications of power dynamics. That said, after reading this chapter, the first media reference that came to mind was that of Monty Python's Holy Grail, and the scene with King Arthur and Dennis the revolution-minded peasant.

Thus, that became a central part of my mindmap using Mindomo.

https://www.mindomo.com/mindmap/bcb33df21be64bea9d37b4673e97730d

I begin with a video clip from Monty Python, seeing in it the different forms of government expressed (albeit loosely) by this chapter of New Learning. First, there is the all-providing government nation/state (aka King Arthur), which I equated to Nationalism (big government). Then there are the masses wallowing in filth (Dennis and company) who are clearly NOT having their needs met by the state and so are attempting to apply market forces to provide / create jobs, shunning the state’s (King Arthur) powers. Yet, there is resistance; the State (King) refers to these citizens as “we are all Britons.” The peasants have other things in mind, however. The scene calls to mind the Neoliberalism model – (marketing in “lovely loads of filth, Dennis”),  but seems to gesture toward the hope of Civic Pluralism in Dennis’ calls for revolution.

As I created the mindmap, I opted to include images that reflected some of what I saw as key real-world examples of the dimensions of each notion of state: State Power, Public Services, Belonging & Citizenship, and Learning Civility.   

Using Mindomo’s  free version offered  a mindmap program that allows me to embed media materials as long as I was creating a link to a YouTube video or simple image (all other forms of media called for an upgrade). The program controls also allowed me to create a somewhat less hierarchical layout given the free tools and templates. Some of the tools aren’t as elegant as I wanted them to be (creating, moving, or changing relationships between major topics and sub topics was often a pain). However, after trial and error, I was able to create something of a flexible set of relationships as I was envisioning the chapter’s lists.

The biggest disappointment in this program was the limited export capabilities. The only choices allowed by the free version are png (which did not capture the entire image) or as the Mindomo file itself (only useful if being opened in the Mindomo program). After attempting to capture the full canvas several times (the png format was cutting off parts of the full image, even when I moved several elements around in an attempt to better manage the space), I resorted to a program I have on my iMac called “Grab It.” This allowed me to capture it as a tiff file, which could then edit in Photoshop to save as a jpg.

This is marketed as a collaborative software, although some of the controls are so touchy (and no clearly visible help feature as an overt part of the system) that I imagine this could go badly very quickly, especially in a student environment. There is no way to correct a change more than one deep (as far as I could tell). Thus, I don’t think I would use this in a freshman composition classroom, as there seem to be better options out there (like collaborative Popplet or Prezi).

There is an option to create boundaries and a presentation mode where I can create slides of sections…reminding me a little of Prezi, but not at all as user-friendly nor creative. While I did create the presentation in Mindomo, it is not something that will export without an upgrade. It is, however, a feature that would resolve the overlarge canvas I created while trying to move beyond a basic hierarchical mindmap.

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This week, I reviewed Heather's notes on NL 4 using Scoop.it and Mike's notes on BR using Coggle. Both of these programs appear promising for a classroom full of freshman writers. I especially liked Coggle's flexibility in the mindmap created by Mike. The creative designs possible seem much more fluid -- the way we actually think when making connections and processing information -- than I was able to accomplish with Mindomo (for some reason I called it Mindmodo).

Heather's Scoop.it entry also seemed to suit our emphasis on learning and brains, as it suggested to me that it could provide students with more of a metacognitive opportunity when working with sources. As Heather mentioned, she was unable to add notes to the book's site itself, but her metacognitively connected images and resources seemed as much -- if not more -- helpful.

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