Spotlight on Strategies: Mind Mapping

The monotonous, boring of task note taking is a common cause of students disinterest in history. Class after class, day after day, students listen to a lecture and take pencil notes on lined paper. Students become disengaged, disheartened, and indifferent. They are Dorothy in her black and white world of Kansas, bored and wishing for something different. Mind Maps can help a student enter the colorful and brilliant world of “Oz,” or in other words engagement. Unfortunately, I have been that teacher who has her students take dull pencil notes. Mind Maps helped me add creativity and interest to my lessons.

Mind Maps are versatile tools with many applications, they are useful for any content area. They can be used as brainstorming activities, to help students remember information from texts or videos, to help solve problems, manage and plan projects, and of course to take notes. Color, images, and connections engage the mind, foster creativity, and help improve memory. They develop the disciplined mind, the synthesizing mind, and the creative mind. As student work with the content, they are learning to think in a disciplined manner. They learn the essential elements needed to succeed in a subject (Gardner, 2008). Students develop their disciplined minds because mind maps encourage “students to make sense out of ideas by constructing them in meaningful ways” (ThinkBuzan Ltd., n.d., p. 17). The spatial layout of Mind Maps helps students develop their synthesizing and creative minds. The connections help guide students thought, and they help students “link apparently different ideas and concepts” promoting “divergent and highly creative thinking” (ThinkBuzan Ltd, n.d., P. 40).

I have successfully used Mind Maps in both middle and high school classes. Once students understand the basics of mind maps and realize they should not be using straight lines and lists they start to enjoy the freedom and creativity. Mind Maps are perfect for students who students who have to doddle when taking notes, these students cover their maps with sketches and images. Students who struggle with drawing are happy when I remind them they are not in art class, and simple line drawings are perfectly acceptable.

The myriad of digital tools available to create online mind maps is amazing. The best part is that most of these are free. My personal favorite is Coggle, for its easy integration into Google, ease of use, and collaborative features. Using Coggle for Mind Mapping brings in the added benefit of collaborative learning. It eases the nerves of students who hate drawing, replacing hand drawing with online images and clipart. Learning to use the programs is quick and easy with the video tutorials on YouTube. Within minutes students are getting into their notes or brainstorming. Traditional Mind Maps can be very time consuming to make while digital mind maps are quick and easy. In a single period students can create a mind map, share and discuss it with their classmates, and then start their project.

Check out my Smore Here: https://www.smore.com/8nmkx

Resources:

Coggle (n.d.). Simple Collaborative Mind Maps. Retrieved form https://coggle.it

Gardner, Howard. (2008). Five Minds for the Future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

ThinkBuzan Ltd. (n.d). Mind mapping: Scientific research and studies. Retrieved from https://b701d59276e9340c5b4d-ba88e5c92710a8d62fc2e3a3b5f53bbb.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/docs/Mind%20Mapping%20Evidence%2

Originally Posted on my Wilkes Blog: http://wilkes.discoveryeducation.com/kristenmccarty/2017/11/20/spotlight-on-strategies/