10 Tips to Improve Your Mind Mapping

There, it is not possible to do things without any rule and tips and mind mapping is not an exception to this trend. Though mind mapping is a free thinking concept for representing ideas and concepts. Yet it requires some limitations too, in terms of binding thoughts in Mind Mapping. Below are provided some tips for developing an effective mind mapping.

1. Try to use colors through your mind mapping. However, do not go with colors as in collage form, yet use each color with specific purposes and conveying away a specific idea or thought. As green can be used for academic conferences.
2. All the main branches and sub branches should be connected with central image and branches out from there. And this is the most promising feature of the mind mapping.
3. Every time for mind mapping start from the center of a blank sheet of landscape oriented paper. As is would be more convenient and easy to have a quick and instant mind mapping.
4. The next thought for mind mapping is use of picture for the central idea of mind maps. As using an image at the core of the mind mapping would make it more interesting and attractive.
5. Make your own way and method to mind mapping.  As you will develop your own method of conveying ideas from mind maps it would be rather easier for you to handle and idea to be incorporated into your mind maps. And make you an expert in mind mapping.
6. Employ emphasis and associations and show them in your mind map. As emphasis let you clearly define hierarchy in concepts that is of vital importance and relevance in mapping. And associations too relate and co-ordinate well with ideas
7. Make the branches in map curved, organic, flowing and tapering outward. As curved braches catch attention of eyes and take through them from central idea to other branches.
8. As for more effect use rule a keyword per line though it is yet difficult in mapping however, if implemented, it would make mapping more serious task.
9. Employ images merely not at the center of maps yet they should be distributed through out. However, you are making it for a faster pace or in hurry then limit yourself only with central image and avoid other images.
10. Use radiant hierarchy, numerical order and outlines as around branches in your mind map. Embracement of branches help to relate two braches which, though are different and are yet coordinated somewhere in thought with each other.

7 Essential Free Web Apps for Professors

Being a professor a person sometimes gets into using various types of technology for learning and delivering lectures and classes. They need applications for presentations, time management, schedules classes and many other tasks related to educational purposes. Below is provided a list of free web applications that can be used by professors.

1. Zotero: It is an open source alternative to Endnote and works with firefox to make online research even easier. With the help of tool you can manage your entire bibliography, can export them to your clip board and further paste them on other websites and documents. It also has integrated tool bar for MS office and Word.
2. Dropbox: It is sort of book marking services with online backup, file storage and syncing. As according to the list it can be synced with your account on their server. Further it helps to access files online through a web browser.   It also saves old versions revisions of files that can be accesses online.
3. Remember the Milk: It is a free online list that gets integrated just with everything and yon can connected to that list from anywhere including mobile phone, e-mail, by twitter, from a desktop. It also set reminders and receive them through text messages, twitter reminders and email. It also gets integrated with Gmail calendar too.
4. Google Reader: It is a RSS feed reader, where most of the websites worth reading can have blogs, scholarly journals and can help you to create your own newspaper for the customized reading. The biggest advantage with Google reader it that it helps one to absorb a good number of information in a fraction of time. One already having Gmail account can also have a reader account.
5. Qipit and Evernote: These are online services where you can upload pictures that you have taken of book pages, whiteboards, and handouts from classes, journal pages in the library, handwritten notes, friend’s notes, etc. The applications can snap you pictures and e-mail them with your phone. More you can even e-mail those pictures too.
6. Drop.io: It is a free, secure, private file sharing tool and is incredibly simple and provides upgrades to its services thus makes it to be more powerful than simply file sharing utility. As a professor you can do a good number of things with the help of this tool, like sharing files with students, creating collaborative learning environments, voice mail, pod casts, chat rooms for each drop, conference calling for each drop and RSS feed for each drop.
7. 3banana: This is a note tool that gets integrated with iPhone. For using this application it is not necessary to have an iPhone as the applications are freely available in the market.  The notes with the help of this application can be tagged and categorized. Each of the notes can be made public and shared through a public HTML Link. And the tool can be accessed by Google Account to be logged into.

Distance College

Distance college is a tutorial program that is offered over the internet. It is the new way of schooling for people who prefer getting international certification. Distance college course materials are sent through email, chats, and podcasts. Group discussions for distance college are held online where the students get into a chat room with their teachers and they exchange ideas. Distance college is ideal and convenient for the people who are already employed. This is because they can add onto their knowledge without having to quit their jobs. They can get their lessons and course material at the comfort of their offices and they can read when they are free. The exams for distance college are also done online and the certification is delivered to the location of the student after they have graduated.

Other advantages of distance college include saving time and resources. This is because the student is not expected to attend any campus for a class. They can log in at the arranged time or they can download podcasts that the lecturers have prepared. In terms of resources, since it is only the tuition material that is offered to the students, other fees like accommodation and school activity fees are not applicable. This becomes cheaper for the student and this is the reason why most of the students prefer distance college since they can sponsor themselves.

Distance college is mainly offered by the established schools of tertiary studies abroad. This is because they have the resources that are required to train a student until they are professionals. Although the training is done online, the quality of education is not altered. The quality is usually better since when a student who has enrolled into distance college chats with students from other parts of the world, they are enlightened on different ideas that are applied in various parts of the world. This is the reason why students of distance college have group discussions online after they have researched on their projects. When students discuss their project findings, they add onto each other’s knowledge and this makes them brighter.

Distance college also provides a variety of courses, some of which are not offered in the countries of residence of the students. This has enabled students to access the courses that they have desired to study. Since distance college involve exchange of tutorial material online, a student does not have to go through the process of attaining travel documents, travelling and resettling in another country. The distance college courses are usually shorter since as soon as an individual feels fully equipped to sit for their exams, they request for it. There are all levels of certification in distance colleges from certificate to doctorate.