A dozen graphic organizers and mind maps
Venn Diagram
I received a lovely email today from Barbara Hayes at After Skoolkids who found the Concept Mapping page at my lab website useful. Being a helpful teacher, she returned the favor by sharing an excellent resource from an ERIC website. Educational Study Tools: Mind Maps & Graphic Organizers features a great list of visualization strategies. Directions and examples are provided for each one.
Graphic Organizers
These are visual representations of concepts or ideas. The techniques below are used widely in K-12 education, but not so much in higher ed.
- Decision Making Model – from top to bottom: problem, possible solutions, advantages and disadvantages for each solution, final solution
- Main Idea Pyramid – apex contains the basic idea, subsequent levels deal with sub-concepts and other aspects
- Question/Answer Chart – approach study material from different angles based on questions
- Venn Diagram – shows shared elements among several objects or ideas
- Sequence Chain – describes a series of events or ideas in a linear fashion
- Flow Chart – also follows a sequence but tends to be simpler and smaller
Mind Maps
I have written about concept maps several times in this blog. They graphically represent relationships among concepts. I didn’t realize there were so many different variations!
- Character Map – analyze character traits or relationships in a story
- Story Map – explore themes and events as well as characters
- Spider Map – follows diagonal lines, giving the appearance of a spider with legs sticking out
- Cloud Map – (a.k.a. cluster map) helps students brainstorm a central idea
- Fish-bone Map – at the head, students jot down the main theme or idea, then fill in details along the bone segments
- Continuum Map – a linear scale for sequential events
Creating one of these visualizations can be an excellent strategy in a variety of situations. Before beginning a unit, students could diagram the way they understand a concept. After reading a short story in a foreign language, students could create a character map. You can purchase specific programs designed for creating concept maps, but you probably already have PowerPoint. It’s great for creating visuals, it’s not too complicated, and most students already know how to use it.
Don’t ask when software will improve learning
A recent article on Wired Campus is titled, Technology Is at Least 3 Years Away From Improving Student Success, and includes the following quote from the Higher Ed Tech Summit in Las Vegas:
We’re beginning to get lots of data on things like time of task, but we don’t have the outcomes yet to say what leads to a true learning moment. I think we are three to five years away from being about to do that. (Troy Williams, Macmillan New Ventures)
No technology per se improves learning. You’ve heard that from me before. There are tools that can help make processes more efficient, and some technologies are easier than others to use well. But a technology can’t inherently improve learning; it’s the way technology is used. Our goal should be to develop systems that incorporate the best strategies. When we talk about these things, we should emphasize the strategies that are being used and downplay the technology.
Technologies CAN help us incorporate strategies that we know improve learning, but a tool is not responsible for the learning. In the same way, it’s not the television that excites us during the Super Bowl, it’s the players … and the commercials. Here’s a quote I love:
Learning results from what the student does and thinks and only from what the student does and thinks. The teacher can advance learning only by influencing what the student does to learn. (Herbert Simon, Nobel Laureate)
In this case, we might alter the second sentence: “Technology can advance learning only by influencing what the student does to learn.”
Facebook profiles bring history to life
Donnelyn Curtis, a librarian at the University of Nevada at Reno, has used social media to give students a glimpse of what life was like for their peers 100 years ago. She created Facebook profiles for Joe McDonald (class of 1913) and Leola Lewis. On behalf of the now-deceased couple, Curtis has posted updates that talk about stressing over tests and being excited about football games – as well as period photos.
What a creative way to use this medium! By placing the profiles on Facebook, Curtis has situated this clever historical narrative in a space that engages many students. You may remember a previous post about innovative use of social media – Romeo tweets Juliet. readers, are you aware of other neat applications? Please share them in a comment.
Read more: On Facebook, Librarian Brings 2 Students From the Early 1900s to Life (Wired Campus)
A spicy tool for interactive concept maps
My Christmas present to you is a review of SpicyNodes, a neat tool that helps you create a “nodemap” made of chunks of information. Each node can include a title, a description, an image or video, and a link. What makes this particular tool stand out is that after you create a map you can interact with it, moving nodes around or drilling down.
Taking steps to respect student privacy in public work
Many faculty want students to write online; I’ve had fascinating consultations with professors who have great ideas for using blogs. In nearly every case there is hesitation regarding student privacy, and I think it’s wonderful that folks are concerned about protecting students’ anonymity. That being said, we seem t0 have reached a state of panic regarding FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a US federal law that protects the privacy of student records).
Swiveling desktop + tablet replaces laptop
Like most workplaces, Notre Dame is on a multi-year cycle for updating employee computers; this year was my turn. Yay! During the previous round I had a laptop that sat in a dock connected to a 19″ display. Over the past year a tablet had gradually taken over nearly all of my mobile computing needs, and I came to the conclusion that a laptop was not necessary. I decided to move to a desktop computer and use the tablet for all out-of-office work.
Celebrating creative uses of Kinect
I love a good TV commercial. Last night I saw “The Kinect Effect” from Microsoft and it became an instant favorite. It’s a lovely piece of theater and very moving. It’s also Apple-esque, eerily resembling the “Think different” campaign. Good for you, Microsoft — I knew you had it in you!
Read, write, or listen during class?
In Slide Stress?, Sidneyeve Matrix writes about some of the issues around using and distributing image-heavy presentations. This humorous quote from one of her students got me thinking about the competing verbal tasks we give students during class:
Prof Matrix’s slides are very attractive and zen,
but you have to write down everything yourself.
Sophia’s last day
Sophia was only four years old but she had a good life. Don’t be alarmed – I’m referring to an island in a virtual world. At around noon Eastern time yesterday, Notre Dame’s proof-of-concept project in Second Life came to an end. The company’s logo (at right) now seems to be waving goodbye. Before everything disappeared I logged in and made a series of short videos as part of a multimedia archive of the project. Read more…
The more things change
Read more…
Lots of ways to pass this on >>