The generated concept maps are associative networks of meaning related to the topics elaborated in the analyzed documents and reflect the creators’ core mental representations.
This paper presents a software-aided methodology for content analysis by implementing the Leximancer software package, which can convert plain texts into conceptual networks that show how the prevalent concepts are linked with each other.
Public CmapServers have resulted in a large collection of knowledge models publicly available, constructed by users of all ages in a variety of domains of knowledge and from a large number of countries. The collaboration features enable remote users to asynchronously and/or synchronously collaborate in the construction of concept maps, and promote comments, criticism, and peer review. The client-server architecture of CmapTools allows easy publishing of the knowledge models in concept map servers (CmapServers), and enables concept maps to be linked to related concept maps and to other types of media (e.g., images, videos, web pages, etc.) in other servers.
It is available for free for educational and not-for-profit organizations, and public servers have been established to promote the sharing of knowledge. CmapTools is a software environment developed at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) that empowers users, individually or collaboratively, to represent their knowledge using concept maps, to share them with peers and colleagues, and to publish them. Technology can further help by making it easy to construct and modify that representation, to manage large representations for complex domains, and to allow groups of people to share in the construction of the concept maps.
Based on the same simple user interface for constructing concept maps familiar to millions of CmapTools users, CmapTools for iPad enables the full elaboration of Knowledge Models, with drag-and-dropping gestures for resources and concept maps, full style palette, and additionally takes advantage of the direct manipulation of the iPad to further simplify the construction of concept maps. It is the perfect tool to rapidly construct concept maps and knowledge models on your iPad and share them on the Cmap Cloud. CmapTools for iPad is the best iPad app for the construction and sharing of concept maps.