Day 26 –Mind Mapping with the Surface RT

30 Days with a Surface RT for Teachers 

Teaching and Learning with a Windows 8 Tablet

In my adventures with the Surface RT I have been trying to find apps that will be useful for teachers. If you were lucky enough to get one of the free Surface RTs from Microsoft at the #iste13 conference I think you will find much value with the Surface RT in the classroom. The other day I found a great mind map tool called M8! and works great with the Surface RT.

Mind mapping and flowcharting are common activities that teachers and students routinely do. While I am a fan of freehand note taking and sketching some prefer to have a more ordered and readable format, M8! fills that need.

M8! is available for free in the Windows Store and also has a more full-featured paid version. M8! is an app that will help you with easily creating mind maps.

 

 

Mind Maps

With mind mapping you start with a central idea and branch out from there. This helps you visualize your ideas and thoughts in a fast and efficient way.
 

I very quickly put together a mind map using M8! about some of the key features of the Surface RT. This mind map barely scratches the surface (sorry, another pun).

M8! uses the touch screen very effectively and as a teacher you can easily zoom in and out of the mind map using the pinch and zoom gesture. This is great when the mind map becomes cluttered and you want students to pay attention to a particular area of the mind map.

You can touch and drag items from one branch to another and the mind map will make the reconnection automatically. It really is an intuitive program to use and students will catch on quickly.

Because it is a Windows 8 app M8! takes advantage of the Charms bar to let you share your mind maps with others. I have mine setup to Share using my email or to Share it (upload) to my SkyDrive. The Share Charm makes this very easy to do. When you are finished you can export the mind map to a file but it saves to a .m8 extension so you will need the M8! app to open it.

To get around this I just take a screenshot of my mind map as screenshots are saved to the PNG format on the Surface RT. If you want to take a screenshot on the Surface RT just press and hold down the Windows Flag icon and at the same time press the Volume Down rocker. You will feel a slight vibration when you press the Windows Flag button to let you know you pressed it. This is haptic feedback since it is not a physical button. When both the Win Flag and Volume Down rocker are pressed at the same time you should see the screen go dim as it takes the screenshot.

Note: If you accidently press the Windows Flag and the Volume Up rocker at the same time you will turn on Narrator and you will hear a voice. To turn Narrator off just press the Windows Flag and Volume Up button again.

Screenshots are saved to the Pictures Folder in the Screenshots sub-folder on the Surface RT.

Since a PNG file is a standard graphic format you can edit it with other image editing apps like Fotor or Skitch Touch on the Surface RT.

M8! is available for free in the Windows Store and also has a more full-featured paid version. M8! is an app that will help you with easily creating mind maps.

 

So, there you have it another extremely useful app for teachers and students using the Surface RT.

Until next time...
Keep on Learning,

Tom Grissom, PhD

Follow me on Twitter @tomgrissom

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