A few years ago I wrote about a nice collaborative mind mapping tool called Slatebox. Recently, Slatebox revamped the back end of service to speed things up a bit. Slatebox now runs on HTML5 and Javascript to speed up the editor. Collaboration now happens in realtime so that everyone working on a mind map can see all changes simultaneously.

The user interface of Slatebox has changed a bit too. Gone are the templates of the old Slatebox interface. Instead every mind map starts with a blank canvas. All additions to your canvas are automatically centered for you. Whenever you add a new node to your mind map the text editor is automatically opened for your use. You can now add images to your Slatebox mind maps by searching the web or by specifying a url. Finally, Slateboxes that you create can now be embedded into your blog or you can download them as image files.

Applications for Education
If you’re looking for a fast and responsive mind mapping tool for your students to use when they plan a project or diagram a concept, give Slatebox a try. Or if you just want to create organization templates for your students to use offline, you can use Slatebox for that too. Create your template, download it as an image, and print it out.