Some of The Best Brainstorming Apps for Teachers and Students

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In response to some of the requests we have received over the last few weeks, here is a collection of some of our favourite brainstorming and mind mapping iPad apps. You can use these apps to capture your ideas, plan your projects, brainstorm thoughts, and create outlines for your work in beautiful visual forms. Whether you want to represent your ideas in the form of a diagram, a flowchart,  a concept map or a mind map, the apps below are absolutely worth trying out. Please note that most of these apps, though they are free to install, they do offer in-app purchases.  We invite you to check them out and share with us your feedback.

9 Good Brainstorming Apps for Teachers

1- Ideament
‘Ideament lets you easily draw a diagram - mind map, concept map, or flow chart - and convert it to a text outline, and vice versa. You can use Ideament for anything, such as brainstorming new ideas, illustrating concepts, making lists and outlines, planning presentations, creating organizational charts, and more!’

2- Mind Vector
Mind Vector allows you to create, edit and share mind maps on your iOS devices. Besides collaborative mind mapping, Mind Vector also offers the following features:
  • Cut, copy and paste ideas
  • Drag and drop ideas to other
  • Visualizers to view and analyze maps
  • Add images as wallpapers to your maps
  • Add icons, colors, line styles and map themes,
  • Export maps in CSV, PDF, PNG
  • Import/Export maps to iCloud, Dropbox and Mind Vector Cloud
  • It offers in-app purchases
3- Grafio 3
‘Allow Grafio to become an extension of your fingertip. Draw a rectangle, circle or an ellipse and watch Grafio recognize and replace it with a perfectly looking shape for your diagram or schematic.’

4- MindNode
MindNode helps you  visualize your ideas and thoughts in beautiful diagrams and mind maps. Some of the features it provides include:
  • Nodes with titles, notes, images, tasks and links
  • Drag and Drop content from other iOS apps
  • Branches and connections to show different types of relationships
  • Many styling options for all parts of the document
  • Export to text, pdf, image and outline formats
  • Offers a free 2-week trial of the full app
5- MindMeister
MindMeister is a collaborative mind mapping app. that offers the following features:
  • ‘Real-time collaboration
  • Seamlessly sync maps and folders with your free online account
  • Share maps directly from the device
  • Multi-touch support for drag & drop, zoom, pan
  • Add icons, colors, styles and map themes
  • View and edit notes, links, tasks and attachments on ideas
  • Draw connections between nodes
  • Play presentations’
  • It offers in-app purchases
6- Padlet
‘Padlet is a digital canvas to create beautiful projects that are easy to share and collaborate on. It works like a piece of paper. We give you an empty page - a padlet - and you can put whatever you like on it. Drag in a video, record an interview, snap a selfie, write your own text posts or upload some documents, and voilĂ ! A padlet is born. Make it even more beautiful by choosing custom wallpapers and themes.’

7- Lucidchart
Lucidchart is great for creating flowcharts, process flows, diagrams, wireframes and many more. Some of the features it provides include:

  • ‘Pre-built templates and hundreds of shapes
  • Share and collaborate with team members
  • Import your Visio and Omnigraffle diagrams to keep your old work and collaborate with colleagues
  • Export diagrams as PDF, PNG, or Visio (Pro only) to use them use natively in other apps
  • View recent diagrams offline
  • Diagrams save and sync instantly with your Lucidchart account, so you'll never lose your work.’
  • It offers in-app purchases
8- Mindly
Mindly is a good mind mapping app to use for structuring, brainstorming and collecting ideas. Some of the features provided include:

  • ‘Infinite hierarchy of elements
  • Attach notes, image or icon to any element
  • Color schemes for elements
  • Visual clipboard for reorganizing content
  • Export as mindmap (PDF/OPML/Text/Image)
  • iCloud support
  • Passcode / Touch ID.’
  • It offers in-app purchases
9- iThoughts 
iThoughts is another good iPad app for creating and sharing mind maps. Some of its features include:
  • Import and export to and from many of the most popular desktop application formats (e.g., Excel/ Numbers, Plain/rich text, iMindmap etc)
  • Export in different formats including PDF, PNG,PPTX, DOCX, XML and more
  • Multiple link styles (curved, tapered, right angled etc.)
  • Over 100 builtin icons, 90 clipart images and 35 background canvas patterns.
  • Doodle (finger drawing)
  • Search (map names, topics, notes, links) across all maps.
  • It costs $ 11.99.
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