collage

August 5, 2008 12:07 PM

I'm looking to make it easier for me to learn by adding pictures, mind maps and maybe animation to the standard taking notes. What is the best computer program for this?

I would like to be able to create mind maps out of what I draw on paper and scan in along with what I can draw on the computer. Also, take pictures and scan them in, edit them and make collages out of all these different things. I would also like to be able to create simple animations. How could I best go about this? I have a computer with Windows XP and one with Ubuntu, so programs for either would work.

posted by amsterdam63 to education (8 comments total)

OneNote for Windows is very awesome for notetaking and supports adding all sorts of things like pictures. Not sure about animations, but definitely pictures.
posted by GuyZero at 12:10 PM on August 5, 2008 [1 favorite]

Evernote is another good option.
posted by syzygy at 12:23 PM on August 5, 2008

PersonalBrain rocks. They'll let you have a ... reasonably powerful version for free. It's nearly exclusively mind mapping. The pay version is ... a steep price though.
posted by frwagon at 12:29 PM on August 5, 2008

also - PersonalBrain is available for both Windows and Ubuntu.
posted by frwagon at 12:29 PM on August 5, 2008

I can second Evernote and Onenote (which I use on a daily basis)

Lifehacker recently did a "Five Best Note Taking Tools" roundup, might help to give it a read. Here you go.
posted by s01110011 at 1:02 PM on August 5, 2008

Mindmaps have been my saving grace over the last year. I use the CMAP program pretty exclusively (you see screengrab of one I made for a presentation here, and several that I made for the purposes of organizing my thoughts for my thesis here) with great success.

With the exception of animation, CMAP appears to fulfill all of your requirements (i.e. it allows you to drag and drop image files into the map, and arrange them as you see fit). Also, it is available free of charge (!) for individual, non-commercial use.
posted by numinous at 1:41 PM on August 5, 2008

This may be the oddball but Visio is quite good for complex note-taking.
posted by bz at 5:22 PM on August 5, 2008

FreeMind is great for mind maps; it doesn't do much of the other stuff, though. You might want to use both OneNote and Freemind.
posted by wireless at 11:27 PM on August 5, 2008