Edited by Anita Pilgrim, Friday, 31 Jul 2015, 06:43
Personally I have never got on with mind-mapping. Spider diagrammes make me want to get out my feather duster and clean that mess off the paper so I can write. I know that the livelier minds of my students can be visual or aural rather than textual so I always pretend to draw one in order that they understand how visually mapping out their ideas could support their thinking, but secretly I just write a list. Grocery shopping, To Do (cat to vet, rake lawn, don't forget to pick up child from school), Report on Social Deprivation and Education, it can all be done by The List. And then you can use the list as your Contents. Although not for the To Do tasks.
However, using mind mapping online tools was part of the game on e(LATE)D so I heaved a sigh and got on with it.
First we were to try out FreeMind. I felt very much welcomed as there is a large note at the bottom of the FreeMind instructions already saying "Did FreeMind make you angry? Write a complaint." I put my ideas into FreeMind, while telling the cat to stop complaining, I would take it to the vet in a moment, and it looked like this:
Well, that is not even pretty! What about some colours and stuff, chaps? Sorry, but that really didn't do much for me.
On to the OU's own mind mapping software: CompendiumLD. My mind map there looked like this:
OK, at least it has some colour, I suppose.
I did find CompendiumLD had value. It is designed not just for free-thinking mind mapping but for planning teaching. I found it helpful that it suggested I make particular nodes for Tasks and Outputs. It enquired tactfully who was supposed to complete these Tasks: Tutor or Student?
I don't really think using these tools used up as much time as I felt, I think they were actually quite speedy. I'm just very impatient with mind mapping, LOL, whereas if I have a chunk of text in front of me I will sit there all day, ignoring the plaintive cries of my hungry cats and child. ("Just have some crisps and sweets. And feed those damn cats.")
CompendiumLD is not valuable for presentation purposes, IMHO. I expect you can see that some of those Nodes have notes attached, but these don't readily open up for others to see. If I was going to seriously mindmap and present, I would use Prezi. Although I hate mind mapping, I adore Prezi. That shows you how super duper good it is. It is intuitive and for very little effort, you can make a set of presentation slides which look stratospherically amazing. You can muck about with all kinds of designs for your Prezi slides, and I do like that. It feels like being back in the sandpit at kindergarten - but with Einstein and Newton making models of time and motion. (I said it feels like that! What you actually produce in there is between you and your conceptual framework.)
OK, now I better take the cat to the vet. Back at you shortly with more reflections on my e(LATE)D TMA e-tivity development process!
Mind mapping - e(LATE)D TMA Stage 3
Personally I have never got on with mind-mapping. Spider diagrammes make me want to get out my feather duster and clean that mess off the paper so I can write. I know that the livelier minds of my students can be visual or aural rather than textual so I always pretend to draw one in order that they understand how visually mapping out their ideas could support their thinking, but secretly I just write a list. Grocery shopping, To Do (cat to vet, rake lawn, don't forget to pick up child from school), Report on Social Deprivation and Education, it can all be done by The List. And then you can use the list as your Contents. Although not for the To Do tasks.
However, using mind mapping online tools was part of the game on e(LATE)D so I heaved a sigh and got on with it.
First we were to try out FreeMind. I felt very much welcomed as there is a large note at the bottom of the FreeMind instructions already saying "Did FreeMind make you angry? Write a complaint." I put my ideas into FreeMind, while telling the cat to stop complaining, I would take it to the vet in a moment, and it looked like this:
Well, that is not even pretty! What about some colours and stuff, chaps? Sorry, but that really didn't do much for me.
On to the OU's own mind mapping software: CompendiumLD. My mind map there looked like this:
OK, at least it has some colour, I suppose.
I did find CompendiumLD had value. It is designed not just for free-thinking mind mapping but for planning teaching. I found it helpful that it suggested I make particular nodes for Tasks and Outputs. It enquired tactfully who was supposed to complete these Tasks: Tutor or Student?
I don't really think using these tools used up as much time as I felt, I think they were actually quite speedy. I'm just very impatient with mind mapping, LOL, whereas if I have a chunk of text in front of me I will sit there all day, ignoring the plaintive cries of my hungry cats and child. ("Just have some crisps and sweets. And feed those damn cats.")
CompendiumLD is not valuable for presentation purposes, IMHO. I expect you can see that some of those Nodes have notes attached, but these don't readily open up for others to see. If I was going to seriously mindmap and present, I would use Prezi. Although I hate mind mapping, I adore Prezi. That shows you how super duper good it is. It is intuitive and for very little effort, you can make a set of presentation slides which look stratospherically amazing. You can muck about with all kinds of designs for your Prezi slides, and I do like that. It feels like being back in the sandpit at kindergarten - but with Einstein and Newton making models of time and motion. (I said it feels like that! What you actually produce in there is between you and your conceptual framework.)
OK, now I better take the cat to the vet. Back at you shortly with more reflections on my e(LATE)D TMA e-tivity development process!