Brainstorming with Mind Maps

Dean Timby of the Business Department at Bucks County Community College asked me to appear at their department's summer retreat to show the faculty the technique of Mind Mapping. The goal was two-fold: to learn about a new tool to brainstorm ideas for the department's future, and to make the point that Mind Maps would be a fun and effective tool to use with their students. This was a different kind of Mind Map presentation for me as the emphasis was really to get the 27 faculty members to brainstorm ideas for their department, and Mind Maps were just a means to an end.

Members of the BCCC Business Dept. take a break from their hard work to pose for a photo.
(Photo by Linda McCann)

I started with an abbreviated version of my typical Mind Mapping with Margaret presentation, emphasizing that Mind Maps are a great way to organize information instead of using lists and outlines. I showed some samples of Mind Maps I've actually used for reading, writing, and speaking. (Yes, I was using a Mind Map for this very presentation.) One of the participants beat me to this point: many K-12 students already use Mind Maps or similar techniques. When they get to college, many already know how to put their ideas down in a mind map or other configuration, and the rest catch on quickly. Why not let them know this is a perfectly acceptable and effective way to start a project? It's the perfect tool for visual learners because they can draw pictures and use colors to "own" the information and make their Mind Map reflect their own thinking. Here's a screencast (ScreencastOMatic.com) of the introductory Prezi I used:

In many of the workshops I've facilitated, participants have a hard time going from a blank sheet of paper to a simple first Mind Map. I thought I'd circumvent that here by supplying this group with the beginning of a Mind Map (including branches for the five areas their dean wanted them to brainstorm) that they could add their ideas to. I made sure they knew that I wouldn't be insulted if they flipped the paper over and made a list of outline if they just weren't feeling the Mind Map thing, but most went ahead and completed the Mind Map. Here's what I gave them to start:

Participants used these Mind Maps as they worked in small groups. At this point, they had launched into lively discussions about their department, and it was no easy task to bring them back so that we could create some electronic Spiderscribed Mind Maps that they can continue to use for departmental planning. At this point I was just listening and typing. Here's a piece of one of those (I don't want to give away all their secrets):

Whether they use Mind Maps in the future or not, we enjoyed a successful brainstorming session today! I like to think that Mind Maps and thinking about how we think and learn sparked some of the exciting ideas they came up with!

Biography Year

Ludwig van Beethoven

It's no surprise if you've looked at this blog that I use Mind Maps to organize information. I learned about this technique from a member of my book club, and for a long time used it only for books. My Mind Maps helped me find connections, threads, and hierarchies in the books I had read, and thus equipped I was confident about entering into book discussions. Eventually, I was using Mind Maps to organize my writing and speaking.

Reading, writing, and speaking with Mind Maps came together this April when I presented my Biography Year project on a panel at the Popular Culture Association conference in Chicago. For the year of 2013, I read one biography per month and Mind Mapped each.

Marco Polo

I'm a librarian, so I was simultaneously looking for trends and questions to use as the basis of a Biography Selection Criteria Checklist. (I'll post that at the end of this post.) Mind Mapping each biography helped me determine what the books had in-common and what interested me about the craft of biography. What were the connections between the biographies and their subjects? There were many. A Meta Mind Map helped me put all this together.

The Meta Mind Map pulls it all together.

For example, I began to include similar branches on my biography Mind Maps to show places and people important to the subject, surprises, and notes about the format of the biography. These Mind Map branches became items in my selection criteria.

In retrospect, I'm not sure how the conference presentation was received or if it inspired anyone listening, but I enjoyed preparing it and describing my project. Mind Maps were essential to making a coherent presentation, and it has been a research method-altering experience!

Margaret "Molly" Brown

Biography Selection Criteria Checklist

1.      Is the biography scholarly, and therefore useful for research, or is it conversational and more likely intended for entertainment? If it is to be used for research, does it have a useful index or detailed table of contents?

·         The Bonaparte, Beethoven, Springsteen, Polo, Brown, and Champlain biographies are scholarly.

·         Tina Fey’s and Malala Yousafzai’s are informal and conversational, known as Essay biographies. These books are portraits intended for entertainment.

2.      Was the book written by the subject themselves, and thus an autobiography or memoir?

·         Tina Fey’s and Malala Yousafzai’s are autobiographies.

3.      If the biography was written by another party, what kind of access did the biographer have to the subject, people in the subject’s life (for interviews), or primary sources in libraries and archives?

·         In the case of Jane Franklin, there is very little written on the subject, but an infinite amount on her brother.

4.      Does the biography cover the whole life of the subject (Narrative biography) or just a part?

·         Springsteen’s biography starts before his birth with his grandparents and parents and brings the reader up to the present day.

5.      Does the biography split the subject’s life into parts or facets (Topical biography)?

·         For example, Beethoven as a man and Beethoven as a musician.

6.      Is the biography actually about two people, such as the Jane Franklin/Benjamin Franklin work? (This is called an “And” biography by Milton Lomask.)

     Biography Bibliography (The books I read) 

Bergreen, Laurence. Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu. NY: Vintage, 2007.

Carlin, Peter Ames. Bruce. NY: Touchstone, 2012.

Croke, Vicki Constantine. The Lady and the Panda: The True Adventures of the First American Explorer to Bring Back China’s Most Exotic Animal. NY: Random House, 2005.

Fischer, David Hackett. Champlain’s Dream: The European Founding of North America. NY: Simon & Schuster, 2008.

Fey, Tina. Bossypants. NY: Reagan Arthur Books, 2011. Kindle File.

Gottlieb, Robert. Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt. Jewish Lives. New Haven: Yale University, 2010.

Iverson, Kristen. Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth: The True Life Story of the Titanic’s Most Famous Survivor. Boulder, CO: Johnson Books, 1999.

Lepore, Jill. Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013.

Lockwood, Lewis. Beethoven: The Music and the Life. NY: W.W. Norton, 2003.

Stroud, Patricia Tyson. The Man Who Had Been King: The American Exile of Napoleon’s Brother Joseph. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2005.

Teachout, Terry. Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington. NY: Gotham, 2013.

Yousafzai, Malala. I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban. NY: Little Brown, 2013.

Where can we find CONFIDENCE?

Confidence: the word has been popping up frequently in my work. I find confidence comes from preparation, learning the vocabulary of a thing plus analyzing its parts and how they relate to each other and other things. While analyzing the curriculum requirements of a small college recently, I convinced the other members of the task force (committee) that one of the tools students need to emerge with is confidence. Students need to be confident communicators, and confident in their acquired knowledge, whether they go on for more education, enter or move up in the workforce, or live as educated people.

Learning the vocabulary of a thing is straightforward. I have always used flashcards to learn definitions. My mom spent countless hours with me drilling vocabulary words. We'd put the learned word cards aside and focus on the difficult terms. This method worked: I was a confident student. I still use flashcards now, for foreign languages, new words, and subject matter for work and intellectual curiosity. I still use index cards in many colors, but I am currently exploring the possibilities of electronic flashcards. Take a look at Quizlet and the mobile app Flashcards+. I'm creating decks on each of those for the Medieval Literature course I'm taking and the Opera Appreciation course I will be teaching.

Learning about the parts of a thing (analysis) and then fusing them together (synthesis) to understand the whole is a bit more complex. Mind maps are my favorite tool for this, but I understand they don't work for everyone. I can separate the parts of a book, for example, study them, and then put them back together to get a deeper sense of the story or the author's argument. I mind map things constantly to better understand them: books, courses, and data of any kind.

In order to make sense of the mountain of reading and video sources for that task force (committee)from the first paragraph examining curriculum, I mind-mapped each item, but I also made a separate mind map of the concepts that seemed important. 'Confidence' was one, but many writers and speakers discussed 'balance,' 'innovation,' 'informal learning,' 'creativity,' and others. I included notes on which authors discussed which terms and found overlap. That little mind map in purple ink on a half-sheet of paper is very handy for discussions with the task force (committee). That little mind map gives me confidence. Here is an electronic version with links to videos and articles that I made with SpiderScribe, my current favorite electronic mind mapping tool. You can move around in this smaller version or click in the upper right to see the larger view.


Mind maps work for me, but I understand they don't work for everyone. There are skeptics in every "Mind Mapping with Margaret" audience. I don't try to convince them that mind maps are better than outlines or whatever linear organization method they might use. Instead, I ask them to simply remember the image of a main idea in the center with radiating subtopics and sub-subtopics. And so, it happened again yesterday: my colleague is faced with chairing a new action team (committee) with a multifaceted charge: "What's the best current, free, electronic mind mapping tool?" "SpiderScribe," I said. His mind mapping epiphany had begun. Off he went to analyze that charge and all its parts, and he created a lemon-lime-colored SpiderScribe mind map that will boost his confidence as chair of that action team (committee).

"My Life In Graphs: A Guided Journal"

"My Life In Graphs: A Guided Journal" (created by Knock Knock and distributed by Who's There, Inc.!) is the title of a book I received for my recent birthday. The reader is prompted to reflect on her personality, goals, friends, and many other aspects of life and then represent these thoughts in various graphs. It's the perfect gift for me, really, (Thanks, Sue) since I delight in visual organization tools so much. There are no mind maps in the book so far, but bar graphs, venn diagrams, flow charts, and pie charts.

I have only completed three charts--I'm tackling one per day--and some require more reflection than others. Yesterday's pie chart asked me to estimate how much time I spend on each task in my morning routine. It is no surprise that my commute takes up almost half of my time. It was illuminating to look at this budgeted time represented in colorful pieces of pie. I had to think mathematically, too, to fit my ninety minutes of morning preparation into a pre-drawn circle marked in equal divisions of ten. Also, those ninety minutes have to add up to 100 percent. Tricky.

Today's bar graph had me think of four childhood dreams and then plot on the graph how close I have come to attaining them, if at all. This was an interesting exercise, because my natural inclination was to list current bucket-list-type goals. That's not the task, though; I had to come up with childhood dreams. Also, taking stock of what I've accomplished as an adult and then listing them as childhood dreams would create a colorful chart but would not be realistic.

As the cover says, the book is 76% reflection and 24% naval gazing. So far I find that to be accurate, but I have also found it to be 60% fun and 40% thought-provoking, and 100% perfect for us mind map types.

Cool New Tool: spiderscribe

I presented my new and improved mind mapping (etc.) presentation four times this academic year, and I always get the same question: "What about software?" I've blogged before in this space about my preference for making hand-drawn mind maps because I feel that I get more out of that process. For me, the drawing (and coloring) of a mind map helps me get to the synthesis, the deeper learning, and the flow of a concept easier.

That said, I do understand that mind maps can be used for other purposes: presentations, memory aids, organizing notes, and pulling together assorted media. Until very recently, I didn't have a favorite electronic way to organize this stuff. It seemed that since I started paying attention, mind mapping software has disappeared from cyberspace, has gone from free to not-free, and is just plain clunky. Tony Buzan's iMindMap is super, but you have to pay for it. I'm just not comfortable recommending an expensive tool like that (however snazzy and useful) to educators who will be using it with students.

Today in my inbox was an email from a friend with just a simple link in it: http://www.spiderscribe.net. This might be the one. I watched the short introductory video and then toyed around with it. It's simple to use, and can bring together photos, text, Word docs, and even maps easily. It would work an effective presentation tool, but without the established path function that Prezi has. There aren't many color, shape and clip-art choices, but the spiderscribe is designed to be visually apealling without those bells and whistles. There's not an embed option, so I can't plunk my sample into this blog. However, here is the mind map I created this morning to test out spiderscribe: Cape May Lighthouse. Maps can be public, private, or findable only if a viewer has the link.

I like it. I like how it reminds me of Evernote for organizing data and images but Prezi at other times when considering presentation. Try it!!

Glogster Works for Visual Organization

Glogster is a free, snazzy-looking, online poster-making tool that can be used to organize information visually. I had to create an assignment for a Media Literacy Institute I attended this year using social media tools. I used Glogster for the front part, incorporating an Xtranormal video explaining the assignment, then showing the phases of the assignment (finding, evaluating, and using information ethically) graphically, and ultimately linked out to an example of a finished assignment. I used Prezi for this (also a great free tool for visual organizers) and featured Screenr and Evernote. I thought it looked pretty cool and covered the assignment well.

Click on the following link, then follow the arrows. At the end, the Glog should link to the Prezi where you'll have to advance manually, clicking on the triangle.

http://margaretmontet.glogster.com/il-assignment/

"Organizing Information Visually for Deeper Learning, Efficiency, and Continuity"

Before the Presentation in San Diego (photo by Linda McCann)

This was the title of my latest mind-map-related presentation, at the Innovations 2011 conference in San Diego. It's a cumbersome title, I know, but I wanted to be sure my audience of community college educators understood I would be speaking about more than just mind maps. I was including other techniques for organizing information as well as how to use these tools to inspire ourselves and our students towards deeper learning.

This presentation evolves every time I offer it. For the San Diego presentation, I added some ideas from the book Ways of Seeing by John Berger. This is an older book, first published in 1972 and consisting of seven essays, explores how humans learn to process concepts with pictures before they master language. This idea reinforces the teaching of mind map guru Tony Buzan who claims this is why mind maps are so helpful for organizing and remembering information. I contend that this is also why mind maps could be so beneficial at a community college where there are many developmental students and students for whom English is a second language. Start with pictures. Use images to remember information.

I also added some feedback into this presentation to support my ideas. When I explain that I understand not everyone in the room will take to mind maps and other forms of visual organization of information right away, I usually encourage attendees to keep an open mind. That is what happened to Brian, a colleague, who on a recent bike ride with his son, came upon a bear. this is rather unusual for out part of the country, and while he was primarily concerned with their safety, he wanted to make sure his son saw the bear himself and retained the priceless memory. A mere narrative did not suffice because there were so many parts to the story. Brian ended up creating his first mind map to record the details of the day and the many emotions conjured up by the bear sighting. The story went over well.

The Ah-Ha Mind Map, the book Snow in August (photo by Liz Sette)

I had warned the attendees that the presentation would seem memoiry at times because the best mind maps (and other graphic representations) are the ones that come from real life and represent content that is important to me. This made sense. I was free to show mind maps (etc.) from my articles that were influenced in form and content by organizing information this way. I also included some mind maps that were essentially cheat sheets and simple timeline organizers because mind maps work for those purposes, too.

The presentation was a success, I thought, and as icing on the cake, one of the attendees likened the use of mind maps (and others) to Hegelian Dialectic. In fact, that's pretty much it in the original sense of the idea: there's the concept to be studied (thesis), the breaking-up or analysis of the concept into branches or linked boxes or whatever the chosen format dictates (antithesis), and then the forming of new thought or deeper understanding (synthesis). I'll probably borrow that in my next presentation.