Online graphic organizing tools

The blog Free Technology for Teachers has a recent post illuminating nine freely available online tools that can be used for graphic organization of ideas or mind mapping. These can be useful tools for visual learners and can help students broaden and narrow research topics and see the relationships between different concepts. Among the tools highlighted are Wise Mapping, Slatebox, exploratree, and mindmeister. The library also has Creedo Reference (you must login to access this link from off campus), a database aggregating electronic encyclopedia articles which includes a "Concept Map" feature similarly allowing students to visually see the connections between different research topics.

Video Search Tool

VideoSurf is a new metasearch tool for online video resources that searches such sites as Hulu, CNN, Metacafe, ESPN, and Comedy Central. (Hopefully, they'll add more in the future!) It bases its searches on visual identification as opposed to only relying on text to locate a source. It also allows users to navigate through results to find "the specific scenes, people or moments they most want to see". This may be a wonderful tool for locating video for instruction and educational purposes as well as providing new ways of accessing this medium for research purposes.