Exporting from the Mind Map
Up to this point Mind Mapping can be seen as a valuable tool for course
planning and the allocation of resources but the real power of the software lies
in its ability to export out from the Map into a number of different formats.
Mind Manager has the facility to Export the Map in a number of different ways.
For our purposes the most important of these are:
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Exporting as a Web Page
Exporting as a PowerPoint presentation
Exporting as a Word document
The next stage of this manual looks in detail at exporting the mapped material
as a Web Page.
Exporting the Mind Map as a Web Page
If we continue to use the example we’ve been developing, then we’ll return to
the subject of Sport in Scotland. There is still only one of the major branches
of the map that we’ve expanded – Golf – and normally you might want to
populate more of the map than this before exporting it as a web page.
However, you can export at any time and continue to export as you update.
To start the export you go to the File menu, select the Export command and
select Web Page as your final destination.
At the end of this process what will be produced is a fully functioning set of
inter-related web pages which can then be run from any server on the
Internet, a college Intranet or VLE. For the moment however, the whole thing
will be running locally from the hard drive of the machine on your PC. In other
words, you can do all of the development you need to do at your desk without
having to call on your local, friendly IT expert to mount your pages on the
server.
Style and Layout
When you have selected the Export as Web Page option, then the following
window opens which allows you to make some choices about how your final
Web Pages will look. This is rather like choosing the background in
PowerPoint from the library of backgrounds which are provided. All of the
Styles available – and there are currently 37 of them - arrive with the
navigation mechanism built in and symbols to indicate:
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Home page
Next Page
Previous Page
You can even customise the style by altering some aspects of the programme
but let’s leave that to one side for the moment.
Drop down menu
contains 37 different
preset styles
Drop down menu
contains 7
different preset
Screen layouts
The second issue we have to consider is the Layout that we want to use for
our Web Pages. There are seven different layout styles:
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Java Outline
Java Outline with Image Map
No Frames
No Frames with Image Map
Simple Image Map
Text Outline
Text Outline with Image Map
There are some technical aspects affecting which choice of layout you might
make but at this stage that needn’t concern us. The options which include an
image map, such as the second one in the list, present your original Mind Map
on the screen as well as an outline of the different sections of the materials
you have exported. This works well for fairly simple maps but when a project
becomes quite detailed there can be problems in the whole of the map fitting
on to the available screen space. The best thing to do at this stage is to
experiment with different styles and layouts and decide which of them suits
your own particular taste. It only takes seconds to alter both, again by going to
the file menu on your original map page and following the steps already
described. Take some time now and experiment. In this example I’ve made
the following choices:
Screen Style
Screen Layout
Executive
No Frames
Title from the centre of the original Map
Compare this
screen shot to the
original map
Hyperlinks to each of the major branches
This is the home page of the Sport in Scotland map and it functions exactly
like the sort of web page you are probably familiar with. Parts of the screen
have now become hypertext links shown in the standard blue shade used for
links. Clicking on these will take you to another part of the map. If we click on
the link to the golf section of the map then the following screen appears:
Navigation
 Home Page
 Previous Page
 Next page
Now we’ve moved down on to the Golf branch of the Mind Map and from there
we’ll click to look at the ‘courses’ section.
Hypertext link to the URL
for St. Andrew’s
Here you can see the text and the illustration entered into the text pane for the
branch on courses. If you look back to earlier screen shots of the map you will
see the open book symbol that indicates this.
There are also hyperlinks that have been created to 5 of the major golf
courses in Scotland so now we’ll click on St Andrews and this will take us out
to the official web site of the course:
Conclusion
There are more complex elements in Mind Manager but the basic concepts
have been explored in these pages and there should be enough material to
help you to begin to build courses using the tool. To recap, there are three key
stages to development:
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Designing the map
Enhancing the map
Exporting the map
Now it’s over to you.