Spicy Node is a website that allows users to create their own mind maps in a variety of styles and colours. "Great!" I thought, "this would be perfect for my teaching!" Isn't it funny how we often look back on ourselves and think "What an idiot"?
The creation of a mind map is fairly straight forward. You create a master 'node' and continue to edit further nodes to your preference. However I found that, on a number of occasions, nodes would delete themselves. I would spend 10 minutes creating a node with a detailed description of discrimination only to realise it hadn't saved itself and I was left with "New Node #14".
Once completed however, the mind map was very presentable. The major problems came when I started teaching.
Issue #1
During all of my lessons I have the benefit of a SMART board. Unfortunately, Spicy Node is only compatible with this in a very limited way. You can click each node and navigate through them easily, but you cannot drag the nodes around for a better view without using the mouse. This meant that I was forever switching between the SMART board and the computer to prevent my nodes cowering behind their brothers.
Issue #2
Whilst the map looked presentable on the computer screen, it was a different story on the board. There was a constant battle between wanting enough nodes on screen at once and making the text big enough for people to see. This may have been eased by the zoom function but this was another function that was uncontrollable using the SMART board. Therefore I was having to allow extra time for students to read through the node as they had to strain. This may have been solved by the full screen feature, but when this was enabled all the nodes opened and spread themselves across the page like water spilling off a table. It looked awful.
Issue #3
The final issue I had with this website was that, when opening the nodes, they would move in unpredictable directions across the screen. this means that I was constantly looking at the wrong place and would take a beat to discover my place. The students also complained that they were confused about what was actually going on due to the constant movement of text.
These lesson-breaking issues mean that I will retract my original opinions.
(Revised) Verdict: Not for me
Okay, this sounds like a nightmare, however you have created a fab resource for your students to use at their leisure? They can use it on a computer screen and get the fab results that you had in the first place? All is not lost, what do you say?
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