Freeplane Tutorial Extensions
Introduction
Take the Freeplane...
Freeplane is free and open source mind mapping software. It can be used for knowledge and project management, notetaking, presentations, and writing essays, books and theses. This manual will provide an introduction to the software and help you understand some of the many ways it can be used.
What is Mind Mapping
A mind map is really just a generic tree diagram to which you can add colours, icons and pictures as visual aids. It has a central topic or idea from which other topics and ideas branch out in a hierarchal fashion. This provides a remarkably easy and useful way to work with many kinds of information. Computer mind mapping, in particular, allows for easy manipulation and reorganization as well as clear presentation of information. Besides it allows integration with other tools like agenda's, calculators and filtering systems, but also video and audio systems to make working a pleasure.
What Freeplane is Not
Freeplane is not an all purpose visualisation or diagramming tool. There are many different ways to represent information, and many different tools are available. Freeplane is not meant to be a pure concept mapping, or "network mapping" tool in which any node can be placed anywhere and connected in any way. Yet Freeplane has a mode to freely position some of its nodes freely and all nodes can be connected with labeled lines in any way. Freeplane is not a tool for drawing flowcharts. It may be contorted to do some of these things; but many free specialised tools do a better job.
What Freeplane is
Freeplane is a mind mapper; a generic tree editor, outliner and visualization tool with strong emphasis on knowledge management, presentation and manipulation. Essentially it's a knowledge/information management environment for people, not computers - that is, the aim is to make the information maximally comprehensible and manageable for the user.
Why Freeplane?
Freeplane aims for maximum ease and speed of use. Occupying the middle ground between an editor and a diagramming tool, Freeplane allows the user to add content as quickly and naturally as they would in a text editor, yet producing structured content that can be manipulated as easily as a diagram. The workflow is unimpeded by the need to think about and manually place each piece of information; the user can intuitively input content as paragraphs and headings, and easily reorganise at a later stage.
Freeplane allows for granular presentation at any level of detail, as each piece of information is a unit in a hierarchy, any level of which can be displayed or hidden with a single click. Thus Freeplane allows a synoptic overview of any project as well as the ability to focus in on the small details. In addition it is possible to place information independently of this hierachy or click it in at a later time.
Advanced information management features such as metadata tags and filtering options allow for alternative views of a project. Strong import and export options and an open file-format means your work is never locked into the application. And data protection, spread sheet and agenda functions make it a flexible tool for getting things done at home and in school and professional environments.
Finally Freeplane offers potential programmers a versatile scripting language. Programmers may easily develep powerful extensions and students are stimulated to learn programming in a natural and stimulating environment.
Application areas of Freeplane
The tasks supported by Freeplane are summarized on the right. Click on the hyperlink below the image to navigate the mind map.
<<IMPORTANT The mindmap gives an error. This has been reported and is being worked on.>>
Examples
Quick reference 1.2.9
Freeplane 1.2 is under development. This Quick reference gives a preview to its most important features. To view and navigate the reference, click on the link "Quick reference" below the image on the right. The reference is also available in menu Help of Freeplane 1.2, under Getting started. But before this, view this Instruction for viewing mindmaps in Freeplane.
Note that when viewing the reference through the Internet the look and feel is less and some features are not available (e.g. the predefined filters and the Freeplane menu's). If you use the reference from the Help, the look and feel is optimal, but the options are restricted to read only. Only if you load the reference as a .mm file in Freeplane, alle functionality is present.
The Quick reference does not give an introduction to the WHY of mind mapping. Below is a short introduction and are some didactic examples. Please contribute by giving your opinion and by providing more didactic examples. The place to contribute is the Freeplane forum [1].
Personal environment
Dashboard
When Freeplane opens it starts with a standard mind map. This map can be modelled into a dashboard with direct access to the most important information at home and on the Internet. You can do this by simply dragging hyperlinks into your map. Besides you can add (hidden) content to hyperlinks to remember their meaning. Alo you can set signals to remember when you have to give attention to this information. This makes Freeplane paricular supportive in implementing Getting Things Done. To view and navigate the map, click on the link below the image.
Vault
If you have information that needs protection, you can password protect it. It is possible to protect the whole mind map and/or protect a (sub)tree of nodes. The example tot the right contains a protected mind map MyVault. Within this protected map are branches for finance and for websites. These are separately protected.
Open the mind map by clicking My Vault under the picture. Then find the unlock icon in the menubar and click it. Enter the password "MyVault". Now the mind map opens (unfolds) and you see the branches for websites and for finance. Select creditcard of one of the banks, click the unlock menu button and enter password "creditcard". Now the creditcard information unfolds. You can do the same with the other creditcard. Then go to the websites and select the Freeplane open forum, click the unlock button and enter "Freeplane" as a password. Now the information for login unfolds. Note that an explanation of each node is presented below the node titel.
Work environment
Meeting support
One of the things for which Freeplane is frequently used is rapid and easy note taking during meetings. In fact Freeplane can support the whole meeting process. This process starts with designing and distributing the topics of the agenda, keeping the attendants list, adding notes to the topics of the agenda and finally producing the decisions and action list of the meeting. Besides Actions can be supported with time signals. It is even possible to include the incoming and outgoing information in the map, either as hyperlinks or in a special area (Notes). And last but not least, part or all of the information can be password protected.
The Quick reference described above distinguishes between three levels of expertise: Beginner, Advanced and Professional. The two images at the right demonstrate the difference between Beginner and Advanced levels. Both mind maps display the same meeting information, but differently "formatted", with the different components available in Freeplane (node core versus node details, attributes, images, styles, etc.). As a result the information at the Advanced level is displayed in a way which is better suited for the purpose of meeting support. Besides,when the advanced mindmap is stripped from its specific information, the remaining structure could be used as a template for meetings in general.
Click on the hyperlinks below the images to open and navigate the respective mind maps. In Meeting advanced: hover the nodes (texts) to see hidden text like notes.
An instruction (animation) how to make and use the beginner meeting support is available here. This instruction is a stepping stone for the instruction how to make and use the advanced meeting support.(under development)
SWOT analysis
Mind maps can be supportive in carrying out all kinds of analyses. In this, Freeplane suports using images and arrows with labels to display concepts, which helps to keep oversight and focus. In cases these are not enough, Freeplane supports using hidden text which the user can roll down or hover. Click on the small triangles, or hover the cursor over the images to see a descriptive text. To view and navigate the map, click on the link below the image.
Scientific environment
Docear Academic literature suite
Docear supports in doing all the tasks related to literature management:
- Finding new literature (searching and exploring)
- Organizing literature (reading, annotating, and retrieving)
- Creating your own literature (drafting, writing, referencing, and publishing)
Docear is going to be inegrated with Freeplane starting October 2011.
School environment
Assignment & Presentation
A map can be used to provide students with an assignement for a presentation, including directions, types of questions and links to litterature. The student can click the literature links to open the literature and add answers to the questions - in the map itself.
The map to the left contains a map with keywords for questions and literature links. For the advanced student these could be removed. Once the assigment is completed and the result is entered in the map, the map could be used to learn and do the presentation.
The map to the right contains model answers to the questions which could be used to check the result. You could protect these answers with a password so the student can see them only after you gave him the password. To view and navigate a map, click on the link below the image.
<To DO: translate the maps in English>
Animations
The following are some examples of animations. They were made in Dutch for FP 1.1.3 and need to be adapted to 1.2 and translated in English.
- Instruction for viewing mindmaps in Freeplane.
- Demonstration of Details, notes, attributes and filtering.
- Making your first map.
User manual
More information can be found in page user manual.
User forum
Open forum Freeplane for questions and discussions.
Links
Some very simple scripting examples
