FreeMind Trouble Shooting

Hello there all,

Sorry if I didn’t answer your comments on e-tivity 9, but for some unknown reason, Blogger wasn’t sending the comments as it usually does :-( Anway, here I am with a trouble-shooting post about FreeMind. But do remember, it’s optional, not compulsory, for e-tivity 9. The aim of the task is for you to reflect on your learning - that's what I'm interested in, not the technology at this point.

First of all, don’t worry, sourceforge is a very reliable source.

If you’re having trouble downloading, from the downloading page you can choose a different location, e.g. Bologna, Italy. This might (or might not) speed up the downloading process. Note that once you’ve downloaded it, if it’s like the one I downloaded, it’s a zip file and you’ll have to extract the files first. Once you’ve extracted them, installation should start.

But first, let’s look at the system requirements because there’s no point in installing software that can’t run on your computer.

· As far as the Java script is concerned, if you go here you can find the 1.4 version specifically requested by FreeMind. Otherwise, go here and find the latest version. Note that the site says to restart your browser once you have installed it (it may even be worth restarting your computer). Click here for a little useful information about Java :-).

· About 13MB of Hard Disk space for the full version, including all the plug-ins.

· At least 512MB of Memory.

To find out about your hard disk space and memory, click on ‘risorse del computer’, right click on your mouse, and choose ‘proprietà’. This should take you to ‘proprietà del sistema’ where you can find this information.

Linking it to your blog.

As I believe you all know, a wiki is a webpage that can be edited by anyone. The FreeMind website is a wiki, so you can edit it and add your mindmap to the Mindmap Gallery. I’d put them under the English-Educational category. But first, upload your mindmap to the wiki. Click here to do that. Click on the edit button. As usual, you will have to login (use whatever name and password you want, but as usual, if you use the same one, it’s easier to remember!). Go through the process and it will welcome you. Go back to the English-Educational category and click on edit again. Click here to find out how to embed them OR just take a look at what Martina did last year and do the same thing ;-) When you click on save, your link should appear and you can link this to your blog.

OR

If you haven’t got the time or desire, do it on paper, take a digital picture and upload it to your blog (or upload it to Flickr and then to your blog). Flexibility, that’s what finding a solution is all about.

I hope some of this helps. Feel free to write questions as comments to this post now.

Sarah