Concept Maps

11 November 2001

Usage ofUML-ish Concept Maps for explicating complextopics.

2.2005 update
Rediscoveredconcept maps, and am finding them very helpful invisualizing the whole system we are developing right now.

2001
jre resolved, it was a path prob. Sitemap now exists on marge, fire upthose clients and start playing around with it.

installed on marge*, there is a jre issue. cmap is great as acollaborative environment. I'll be porting Doug's sitemap image intocmap, with each element linking to related elements and attaching aknowledge base/discussion thread to elements as needed.

Content maps are a means to share knowledge about a project/object andto collaborate in development.

Components of the content map application

  • Content map server - this is the coretool for creating/storing/sharing concept maps
  • Discussion Thread server - this is theserver component that handles/stores threaded conversations about anelement or set of elements
  • Soup Server - this is a knowledge basethat hold proposed ideas/actions about a particular map, element in amap, or set of maps or set of elements from several maps.


Knowledge Soups allow users to create maps that they don't necessarilyshare with other members of the project. One can take notes in theirscratchpad and choose which notes to add to the public knowledge baseand which ones to further refine or discard.

Users can add images, movies, and text resources to a concept map,providing intuitive access to all collateral material for a givenelement.

At this stage of review, I see the concept maps as a means tocollaborate on a high level about a project or set of projects(sitemap/wireframes, level 1 2 requirements, etc) and todrill down to the desired level of granularity. The ability for usersto work on the same document without emails and attachments is adefinite plus, though the lack of versioning is less than ideal. I'mconsidering doing daily backups of the database in order to maintainthe diffs, though frequency may need to be increased over time.

The client tool (editor) is available for Windows, Mac, Solaris, andLinux, so cross platform collaboration is not a problem. There is alsoa web interface which I have not yet dealt with and will report on atgreater length soon.

&

*machine names are Simpson themed