Digital Delights for Learners

In short, then, Scapple is a tool for getting early ideas down as quickly as possible and making connections between them. The main advantage of doing this in Scapple instead of on paper is that you don't run out of paper (the Scapple canvas expands to fit as many notes as you want to create), you can move notes around to make room for new ideas and connections, it's easy to delete and edit notes, and it's easy to export your notes into other applications when you know what you want to do with them.

Scapple isn't mind-mapping software - rather, it's more like a freeform text editor, allowing you to make notes anywhere on the page. It doesn't force you to make any connections, and it doesn't expect you to start out with one central idea and branch everything else off that. There's no hierarchy - every note is equal, so you can connect notes in circles or even connect every note to every other note if you so wish. Individual notes can be a short or as long as you like. Creating and removing connections between them is as easy as dragging one note onto another.