Initially developed in Verizon labs, Compendium is a powerful open-source mindmapping and data organization tool. It’s currently offered and supported by the Compendium Institute.
The technology (or what are my powers)
Compendium has an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface that allows you to create map nodes connecting files (pdfs, images, PowerPoint documents, WORD documents, etc) and/or folders.
In addition to creating links between items you can also name links to define relationships.
An interesting feature of Compendium is the ability to drag and drop urls and even text snippets from the web onto your map dashboard. If the text is too large, you can always move it into a note or “detail” associated with your map node.
Finally, Compendium is also built to facilitate reflection and dialogue. You can add text questions, ideas, and responses to discussion nodes and use the tool’s built-in icons to distinguish these nodes.
To learn more about Compendium, view this video introduction.
Instructional strategies
Compendium offers many of the bells and whistles that other mind mapping programs offer, but it’s built around the idea that your documents/files as well as web information and images are all part of your mental schema, so it’s integrated with your desktop.
You can use Compendium to:
- Brainstorm a course outline
- Collect assets for projects and storyboards
- Develop story ideas
- Illustrate a mental model of a subject
- Show relationships between concepts and their defining characteristics and connect concepts to examples
- Illustrate the steps of a procedure
- Illustrate the relationships between elements of a process
- Depict the components of an ecosystem or biological process and link these components to additional information
Other mindmapping/content mapping tools to explore:
Instructional Design Fusions 
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