#Freeplane study planner update

It is a program that combines FreePlane and a reference manager called JabRef. I tend instead to use the simpler mindmapping program FreePlane in many cases. VUE is very powerful, though I have not always found the instructions attached easy to understand. What a great idea, to mindmap your references! One edition of Zotero was blessed with a user-written add-on (the kind of thing you get with such open-source software) that rendered one’s Zotero references in a fantastic concept mapper called VUE, or Visual Understanding Environment, put out by TUFTS University.

While we’re talking about Zotero, I gave a good go to a program meant to combine the functions of a citation manager and a mindmap.

But if I was a student starting out, I’d give it a serious look, especially now that it’s serious for student. I can’t start from the beginning again, and don’t really feel the need to. But as Darth Vader said, “It’s too late for me, son.” I’m familiar with MS Word and find it quite powerful and effective, though it isn’t “the latest thing to come across the wire.” And I’ve invested heavily, first in EndNote, and now even more in Zotero. To combine these functions makes all the sense in the world to me. (EndNote is more powerful in some ways, but on balance Zotero is more useful for me.) Now there is an Aussie startup called ComWriter that handles both word processing and the citing of sources.

Zotero is a reference (or citation) manager that I have found more versatile than EndNote, particularly in its ability to cater well for notetaking, linking of references to each other, and instant harvesting of references from web pages such as lists of books on Amazon. Sometimes such double-duty tools have worked for me, others not, and others I haven’t really tried. I thought I’d talk about this in terms of some that are meant to act as in-between tools that combine functions done singly by others.

#Freeplane study planner update

Just an update on my experiments with software tools for study and research purposes.