This is part 1 in a series of posts highlighting how mind mapping can be used in education. In this first post we’re going to see how mind mapping can be used as teaching aid.

Trying to capture your students attention and focus? Then why not use mind maps to give them a more visual aid to their learning? By using mind maps, you can capture the interest of your students with something that involves everyone and at the same time conveys information in a more stimulating and short hand medium.

The Same Old Method

The bane of any teachers day is trying to capture the attention and focus of their students. Whether demonstrating mathematical equations or dissecting the plot of a classic novel, teachers often rely on blackboards, whiteboards, and smartboards to explain and educate. More often than not though, the students will be faced with lines and lines of notes put in front of them that they must copy to remember or condense in their own style.

The problem with this is that the students aren’t engaged in any way and therefore act like drones, simply scribbling away what they see in front of them.

In order to involve the students more and capture their interest, we need to give them a way of communicating their ideas through a medium that is recognisable and easy to read. Enter the mind map!

The Big Picture

Probably the easiest way to start introducing mind mapping as a teaching aid, is to use mind mapping to explain topics and subjects by giving them the big picture.

Before a lesson starts, take 5 minutes to quickly mind map out the subject on the board that is going to be covered in the lesson. If your more prepared and technically able, then you could also use mind mapping software and a projector to show the mind map complete with all the visual aids required like coloured keywords and images.

By using this method, you are giving your students a more visual and appealing format that they are more likely to associate with, rather than lines of notes. At the end of the lesson the mind map could be duplicated to a medium suitable for distribution whether it be simple paper or as a digital file that the students can take away.

Class Mind Mapping

The second method involves the class and is best suited to subjects where students can collaborate on a topic or subject.

At the beginning of the lesson, start the mind map with a core topic using an image or keyword. This is the starting point of our mind map. In order to break the students into mind mapping, you might want to take suggestions for the core topic from them.  This gives them a chance to see how mind mapping works.

Next, identify the main topics surrounding the core topic. Add these to your mind map, explaining to the students how these main topics are associated with the core topic.

Once the students have an understanding of how the mind map works, ask each student to approach the mind map and add a keyword or image to a main topic of their choice. The only rule is that each student must add something and it must associate with a main topic.

Finally, take a few minutes to discuss with the students what’s been added to the mind map. You can discuss with the students the associations between topics, and the keywords and images they have added to each topic and their reason why.

This is almost like a brainstorming session except your not asking the students to generate ideas.  Instead your asking them what they know on the topic. It helps students to re-inforce what they know and find out things that perhaps they should know.

As you can see from these examples, mind mapping is a great way for teachers to interact with their students. Not only does it grab their attention, it encourages participation from your students in a way that you might not have thought possible.

In the next part of the series, we’ll be looking at how mind maps can be used as learning aids.

A while back I posted about different mind map recipes that you could use for taking notes from a book and for organising your next actions, GTD style. With these post I didn’t include any examples of the mind maps that could be used in your mind mapping software.

To help people out, I have decided to put together some examples of these mind maps so that you can see how they’re laid out. In each bundle I have included the following:

• A Freemind version of the mind map
• A MindManager version of the mind map
• A MindManager template of the mind map

Here’s how the mind maps look in MindManager along with a link to download each one:

The Book Notes Mind Map

Download The Book Notes Mind Maps

The Next Actions By Context Mind Map

Download The Next Actions By Context Mind Maps

The Next Actions By Project Mind Map

Download The Next Actions By Project Mind Maps

These mind maps are only for you to get started off and are by no means final.  These mind maps should be customised to your particular style of mind mapping so that you get the most out of them.

If you like these mind maps and would like to see more then drop me a comment below.

Driving Readers Mind Map

Mind Mapping is a great tool to have in your belt. I especially find it useful for condensing down articles that I see on other blogs. After reading through this article on the ProBlogger site, I wanted to act on the information on the blog, but I wanted it in a more condensed form.

Enter the Driving Readers Mind Map!

Getting The Layout Right

My first pass at the mind map would be in pencil, as I knew I was going to be all over the place re-organising things and deciding on ordering different keywords.

To start with I quickly identified an image to use as my central image. “How to Use Forums To Drive Hundreds of Thousand of Readers to Your Blog” was a bit long and so I settled on a steering wheel with “Readers” across the front of it.

After reading the article a couple of times, I then identified my basic ordering ideas.  This would act as the main topics for my mind map.  The great thing about mind mapping on-line articles is that they are usually already split into sections or are in the format of a list.  This makes it easy to know what your main topics are going to be on your mind map.

At this point I had an initial layout of the mind map.  Here you could move things around if you want, before you add associated keywords to each topic.

Expanding Topics

On the second iteration I expanded each topic by adding keywords from each section that were associated with the main topic.  As a rule of thumb I did try to stick with a single keyword per branch, but I faltered on this on the “Write” branch.  I try to stick with single keywords per branch, but the maximum I would ever use on a branch is two keywords.

At this point I also added images to branches where I thought they needed them to convey more information or just to add fun to the mind map.

On my final iteration of the mind map, I add colour to each branch by simply going over all my pencil markings.  Finally I just take an eraser to the paper to take those pencil markings that are showing up.

Done!

After a few iterations at the mind map, I had all the key ideas sorted out in a way that I could easily read.  Starting from the “Identify” branch, the mind map follows the key ideas from the article through to the “Be” branch, which acts as a summary.  All in this process from reading the articles to final mind map took just under an hour.

Got any comments you care to make on the map?  Any areas you like or don’t like?  Maybe you also like the article at ProBlogger, but your looking for a more condensed form to follow.  Would you use this mind map as a guide to drivers readers to your blog?