Engaging Students with Concept Mapping

After exploring concept mapping, I feel that this would be great innovative software to use in my classroom. Concept Mapping can be an extremely effective method of taking notes because they show not only the facts, but the overall structure of the subject. Concept mapping helps to associate ideas and makes connections that might not otherwise be made. The fact that concept mapping is now available through software is so cool! It allows students to bring together the strengths of concept mapping with the power of technology. This program makes it easy for users of all ages to construct and modify concept maps in a similar way that a word processor makes it easy to write text. In this way, concept maps can serve as the indexing and navigational tools for complex domains of knowledge.

Concept Mapping software is a useful technique that will improve the way my students take notes, brainstorm, design a complex structure, communicate ideas, and much more. It will support and enhance my students’ creative problem solving. I will be able to use concept mapping when I want my students to understand the structure of a subject I am teaching and the way that pieces of information fit together. Concept mapping will be important in research topics, as well as free writing time. I feel that these will benefit my classroom a lot!

Some specific examples of concept mapping that I can bring into my classroom are to have my students create a concept map before writing any essays, before constructing any projects, before completing any math assigments, and many more activities. It’s a great brainstorming tool and engages many thoughts that might not have been available before thinking outside the box!

Concept Mapping can be an extremely effective method of taking notes because they show not only the facts, but the overall structure of the subject. Concept mapping helps to associate ideas and makes connections that might not otherwise be made. It is a useful technique that will improve the way my students take notes, brainstorm, design a complex structure, communicate ideas, and much more.

I feel that it shouldn’t take too much time to learn this type of application. I feel that my students would be able to learn and understand the process within two days of instruction. It would definitely be worth the time! I feel that concept maps are very helpful in the brainstorming step to any project or assignment!