If you have ever wished for a more visual way of organising ideas than simple lists, mind mapping could be the answer.

A mind map is a way of combining text and pictures to use both sides of the brain, making it easier to visualise and learn ideas.

Traditional mind maps require paper and lots of coloured pencils but rather than reach for the pencil sharpener, why not use a computer?

It means better presentation and maps can contain web links or even complete files. Planning work is easier as topics can be moved around more easily. Finished maps can be printed or used in a word processor.

Getting started
Freemind is a free program for creating mind maps. It can be downloaded from our website. Once the installation file has been downloaded, double-click it and follow the prompts to install the software. If the installation stops because the ‘Java Runtime Environment’ isn’t present on your computer, get this from our website then try the Freemind installation again.

Freemind can look a little scary at first because it uses lots of icons. You can ignore all the icons on the left-hand side of the window for the moment as they are used as labels for parts of the mind map.

Instead, click on the sheet of paper icon to start a new map. This will open showing a grey blob with the title ‘New Mindmap’. Click on this and type the name of your project or plan. We created a map called ‘mind mapping on a computer’, for example.

Now press the Insert key on your keyboard and a new box will appear for a new idea. These ideas are known as ‘nodes’. To enter another one, also connected to the central idea, simply press the Enter key and type in a name. This makes it easy to quickly create several ideas linked to the central theme.

The next step is to add new ideas that follow from the ones you’ve just added. To do this, click the node in question then press the Insert key again – a new idea will appear, linked to the one you just clicked. Add as many new ideas as you like.

Style and substance
So far our map does not include much visual information – it’s simply a collection of text ideas – but this is easy to change.

A good first step is to add some icons to mark particularly important ideas. Left-click on a node and then click on one of the icons down the left side of the window to add that to the node.

A visually appealing way to link nodes is to surround them in a cloud. Right-click on a node, then choose Insert and then Cloud. To change the colour of the cloud right-click on the node, select Format and then Cloud Colour. Select a colour and then click on OK.

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