Title: Another computer tool available is based on Joseph Novak’s model: concept mapping
Author: Toshiba Media User
Last saved by: tom

Learning Maps

Maite Galán & Tom Maguire

Published: (Dec.- Jan 2002) in Resource, Italy

There is a saying which goes, 

“The mind is like a parachute - it works only when it is open”

In this article we invite you to try three exciting ways you can use mapping to enhance your learning abilities. All that you require to gain maximum profit is an open mind and the determination to experiment with these practical examples and decide which is most suitable for you. So open your parachute and dive into mind mapping, concept mapping and body maps.

Margaret Dunn is a high school teacher in Scotland specialising in tutoring remedial pupils with learning handicaps. She remembers one child, labelled as dyslexic, who received a mind map programme in the help package for dyslexics. He became intrigued by the mind map format and learned to cope so well that he is now in university. He continues to use mind maps for any task he is set.

Mind mapping is the brainchild of another university student who had a different kind of problem. Tony Buzan was in second year at university and doing fairly badly. He found himself in the downward spiral of the student who just can’t keep abreast of the workload demanded. Feeling that the remedy lay in using his thinking skills better he went along to the University library and asked for a book on how the brain works. When the librarian directed him to the medical section he explained that he didn’t want to operate on his brain, but learn to use it. The librarian politely told him that they had no books on that topic. 

This incident is what set Buzan off on a search to find out everything he could about how to learn better. After all, he badly needed the information to get through his course. He observed that the basic way students obtain their information is through taking notes and so centred his investigations on this process. He started by studying the three most common techniques he saw that fellow students used during a lecture:

-	Writing a complete transcript. 
-	Writing a summary. 
-	Writing key words only. 

Buzan then tested how much was learned or remembered using each of these three methods in an active or passive form: 

1.	Complete transcript given to student.
2.	Student writes complete transcript. 
3.	Summary given to student.
4.	Student writes summary.  
5.	Key words given to student.
6.	Student writes own key words.

As a result of his study he was able to conclude that the sixth method - using key words - was the best way to take notes.  Buzan also found in those early days that when he used two colours in his notes he remembered the content 100% more efficiently. From these starting points he gradually evolved the architecture of colour and words that he calls Radiant Thinking and which is illustrated in Mind Maps.

Here is an example what a mind map looks like. It is actually the outline of this article in mind map form:

As you can see it consists of a central word or concept, around which you draw the main ideas that relate to that word. You then take each of those child words and again add the ideas that relate to them. In this way an exponential number of related ideas can quickly be produced with virtually no mental effort.

You can see tips on making mind maps at: http://www.tsd.jcu.edu.au/netshare/learn/mindmap 
or consult the mind mapping FAQ at: http://www.gold.net:80/users/dx61/index.html

Mind mapping may come as a surprise to many because most of us have learned to organize our studies, and thoughts, like this:

                                    I. First item 
                                    II. Second item
                                         A. sub item 
                                         B. sub item
                                               1.sub sub item 
                                               2.sub sub item 
                                    III. Third item 

This linear approach to presenting information is so prevalent that when weconsulted the synonym for “information” in our word processor the answer was “in order”, “in rank” or “in a row”. It would seem that we expect news to be presented “in formation”, like marshalling an army of recruits. The problem with this linear approach to organising information is that it is not the way our minds work.

Quite on the contrary, our minds work like websites:  groups of pages, ideas or concepts are linked together, or even branch off on their own into other groupings or webs. Learning combines what you already know with what you want to know and links this new information within our store of knowledge. Our memories then process these new "links" and associations for later recall. This makes mind mapping a much more brain friendly way of sorting out information than processing it sequentially. In fact Buzan claims that the associative manner in which a mind map presents the structure of ideas is representative of how ideas are actually stored in the brain.

Mind maps are especially brain friendly in the way that they encourage use of the right brain. By helping you understand the structure of the information being learned you see the big picture, you notice how the various ideas relate to each other. On listening to or reading information these connections may link the material to other ideas you have which were not presented by the author or lecturer, thus giving you a new insight into the subject.

Some researchers in Multiple Intelligence object that mind maps only cater for students with a highly developed spatial intelligence. However, mind maps are not only spatial, they are very visual and indeed this may be one of the reasons they work so well. We are led to think this due to remarkable research findings first published by Ralph Haber in a 1970 issue of Scientific American. Haber conducted an experiment in which he showed 2,560 photos to subjects. Then subjects were shown 2,560 pairs of photos and asked in each case to say which photo had been in the original group of 2560 and which had not. The success rate in this test averaged between 85% and 95%. In another study, where 10,000 vivid pictures were used, a success rate of 99% was recorded. This led Haber to conclude that humans have an almost photographic visual memory.

Nancy Margulies works with educational groups and corporations worldwide using her unique form of graphic representation which she calls Mindscaping(TM). Using this technique, she teaches others to be more creative and to tap into their artistic abilities. She facilitates workshops on learning to learn and the creation of learning organizations. Mindscaping and mind mapping have much in common, though Margulies tends emphasise the artistic and aesthetics of map production.

Encouraged by Nancy Margulies’s ideas, Judy Ezell, teacher at Fort Gibson Elementary School, uses mindscaping to provide ways for students to widen their vocabulary. First she uses the map to encourage creative thinking, through brainstorming, by allowing each student to give a word related to a colour, a theme (bears, whales, season, etc.), or a feeling (sad, happy, excited, upset, etc.).  She draws a picture of the subject or places the word in the centre of a board or paper, then connects words or pictures related to the main subject with radiating lines from the central picture or word. Judy then hangs these papers up for children to use as word banks.

Other stimulants that she uses to provoke brainstorming are:

-	using a large fruit shape, she writes the other things the children name that are the same colour.
-	writing the name of a book they have just read in the centre of the board, she has students tell about the characters, setting, problem and conclusion as she  "maps" their ideas in words or pictures.
-	taking a theme - Summer Vacation, Zoo, Sun, etc. -  she writes all the words or collect pictures related to the theme. 

Through mindscaping Judy is able to foment cooperative learning, creative thinking and learning to learn - quite an achievement.

Most of the value of using mind maps comes from the process of creating them. Mind mapping promotes active reading and listening. It encourages interaction with the information. This heightens interest and allows you to personalize the information to suit your particular needs. Another spin-off, of course, is that these mind maps will be useful in the review process, thus helping to boost memorisation. 

Margaret Dunn, the remedial specialist mentioned earlier, says that in her school they use mind maps but refer to them as 'At a Glance Sheets'. Students apply this tool mostly to reviewing science data in preparation for an end of unit test. The pupils are encouraged to use colour and drawings to ensure that their revision is active. She says that mapping appears to work very well for some pupils who can visualize where they have placed certain drawings or certain colours and thus hang the piece of information on that kind of peg. The teachers emphasise to pupils that no one else can do the revision for them and that the revision process is a learning activity. In Dunn’s school they find that the whole process of mind mapping is self-activating. She says that it kicks into many of the intelligences that help pupils to hook learning into their long-term memory.

If you are interested in reviewing using mind maps, as in Dunn’s school the system works like this: Try to recall your phone number for a second or two. That was easy to remember, wasn’t it? The reason is that your phone number is stored in long-term memory where we put all the information important to us. Other information is stored in the short-term memory and after a time is no longer available. The learning task consists in deciding which information you need in the long term and then taking the shortest route from short-term memory to long-term memory. You can do this by reviewing your mind maps at the following intervals:

     10 minutes after first learning the material 
     24 hours later 
     1 week later 
     1 month later 

The key to making these review sessions practical is to organize yourself so that they can be done in just two or three minutes. Mind maps are ideal for making short review sessions effective. Use a yellow marker to highlight key ideas you want to transfer to long-term memory. 

After each study session, do something else for 5 or 10 minutes. When you return to your studies, quickly review the key points from the previous session before moving on to the next set of ideas. When you begin studying the next day, take a few moments to review key points noted on the previous day. Once a week schedule some time to review the prior week’s topics. Likewise, once a month schedule a review of the prior month’s lessons. Remember that the best way to anchor new ideas into long-term memory is to actually use them for something.

If you don't invest the time to review what you learn, you will end up wasting time relearning the same material over and over. In addition, the more information you transfer to long-term memory, the easier it becomes to learn
new information. In other words, learning compounds just as interest in a savings account does. This occurs because often the most valuable aspect of drawing a mind map is the impact the process has on your understanding and memory of the material. It doesn't matter so much what it looks like on paper as much as what went on in your head while you were drawing it. 
 
Mind maps are used by millions of people around the world. Boeing Aircraft Corporation in Seattle condensed its Aircraft engineering into a 25-foot long Mind Map to enable a team of aeronautical engineers to learn in a few weeks what would have taken a few years. The result: an estimated saving of $10 million. British Petroleum and Digital Equipment also use the techniques extensively in their staff training programs.

Here is an idea to put that kind of expertise into practise in presenting information, something a teacher has to cope with daily:
	
When presenting information orally, a set of notes in the form of a single mind map has several advantages over other memory aids: 

-	Brevity: only a single page is needed.
-	Immediacy: as ideas are reduced to single words you will be saying not 'reading' the information but rather revitalising it on the spot. 
-	Flexibility: If someone asks a question you can move instantly to the place on your mind map which relates to that question and then return to where you were without loosing yourself in a pile of cards or papers.
-	Clarity: draw your mind map on the OHP as you give the talk. It will clarify concepts, guide listeners and remain as a summary at the end.
-	weknow from experience that Mind Map clarity also contributes to easing pre-talk anxiety because you control all aspects of your subject at a glance.

The latest tool for Mind Mapping is the computer and it offers several major advances over the original mind map on paper:
	
You can easily restructure your computer mind map, moving words and branches around in seconds. This makes the computer mind map even better for quickly creating new ideas and ordering old ideas into a meaningful structure.

	You can instantly highlight different features of a complex mind map. e.g. you might make all the 'expensive' options suddenly appear in bright red or all the 'positive' ideas appear in bold underlined type.

	Being brief and using single words is the key to a good mind map, but sometimes you need to write sentences of explanation for yourself or others. The computer mind map allows you to do this and to keep the extra information hidden until it is needed. This data is also useful as learning information: you should be able to recite the 'comment' information without looking at it. When you can do this you have 'learned' the contents of the mind map and only need the key words to bring it back. 

	In this day and age it is not really acceptable to present your audience with a crayon drawing of your plans. A computer generated mind map gets past this problem by having the same high quality appearance as any other document. 

	With a computer mind map you can instantly export the map to a normal text file, to a word processor document or to a web page, ready to be faxed, photocopied, e-mailed or uploaded to Internet immediately.

You will find a shareware version of mind-mapping software at http://www.mindjet.com. This is a useful tool, particularly for large maps, since the map automatically formats itself while under construction, so that it stays neat and tidy. It also provides a range of colours as you can see in the map example given earlier in this article. It hyperlinks to other documents and one click converts the whole map to a set of structured notes. If you decide to buy the software, you can share maps during videoconferences over the Internet. This is practical because ideas can be negotiated in real time using the map to draw up and document each participant’s contribution. 

The applications of mind mapping are as broad as you want to make them. It is a solid organizational tool for learners and can help you organise all sorts of information easily be it making lists, note taking, brainstorming, conferencing or planning. However, the best news of all is that this technique is fun.

(Part 2 of this article)

© Maite Galán & Tom Maguire