I was quite happy last night when I stumbled upon a mind-mapping programme when browsing the iPhone app store. I have been mind-mapping for about 8 years now and it is just great that I can do this anywhere, any time on my mobile phone.
Mind-mapping is a skill which I picked up in my 3rd year in university. How I wish I knew about it earlier, as for somebody with poor memory retention, it has helped me tremendously. It seems the most natural way for me to organise information, hierarchy is clear, everything is succinct and it draws strongly on association. I love it right from the beginning and had kept using it long after I graduate. Nowadays, I use it to brainstorm, organise and make relations to all kinds of information, from departmental plans to grocery lists.
I was eager to share this with my pupils years ago when I started teaching, introducing this skill to them that has been so useful to me. However, results were mixed. Although I took to this method and had benefited from it almost instantly, many pupils had found it to be a chore. In a feedback session, they told me that they were really doing it only to show me. After that year, I was not too insistent that pupils create mind maps, acknowledging that everybody is different and everyone has to find the most suitable way for themselves to learn.
Study skills is even more important now for our younger generation than it is for me during my time in school. Our pupils now are born in the internet era and are hard-wired from birth in a totally different environment. They learn and perceive information differently. They will need the skills not only to cope with the demands of school but to have the competence and confidence of successfully navigating through their increasingly complicated lives.
What should we teach them in terms of study skills? GTD? Time management? Mind-mapping? I am sure there is a list to choose from.
Or should we begin by learning more about our pupils? What are their favourite handheld games? What kind of music do they listen to? What television shows do they watch? What are their favourite websites? What are they buying with their money? Perhaps knowing more about that will help us better decide.
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the iPhone mind-mapping app is really cool; versatile, fluid though not too organic
Mind-mapping is developed as a mirror to the way the brain works. more specifically, the way a brain cell works.
There was a video of a single brain cell on a microscope slide that stretches its tendrils across the slide, moving the cell from one end of the slide to the other, always seeking to connect to another cell. When the cell reached the other end of the slide without making any connection, it retraces its steps back to the starting point, shriveled, shrank, collapsed and died.
Thus mind-mapping as a thinking and learning tool is but the natural way. There might be personal likes and dislikes about the method but subconsciously, its the method the connects to the brain.
Perhaps why some people can't seem to benefit from this practice is that the brain wasn't working with the action.
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