Mind Maps to the Rescue

Mind maps have come to my rescue again. This time I was struggling to become proficient with some complicated (to me) educational stuff for a meeting where I might have to actually speak with knowledge. In prior meetings with this group I had experienced the uneasy feeling that everyone could speak this unfamiliar language but me. Of course, it wasn't a different language--it was English with a whole lot of jargon.

In advance of the meeting where I might have to speak, I created a mind map which included what I felt to be the important points and vocabulary. I linked similar items and relationships. Then I studied it every day. The initial process of organizing the information and creating the mind map helped me assimilate the information, too.

I only shared the mind map with one person from that group who also admits his facility with the concepts and jargon is less than what he would like. His experience will be different with a ready-made mind map, (from mine because I created it), but as he's also a visual learner, I think it might help.

I am reminded of another time I was stuck for a way to communicate a multifaceted idea of mine. The idea was to be communicated visually rather than verbally or with text only. This would be a poster session with a display on that tri-fold science fair cardboard sold at craft and office supply stores. This should have been a no-brainer for a lover of mind maps like me, but it took about a week of rumination before it dawned on me. I made the mind map in the shape of an apple tree with the main concept on the trunk. The branches each represented a higher-level subconcept, and the leaves and apples represented the next level of detail. It worked intellectually and the browns, greens and reds grabbed the attention of attendees at the event.

The moral of these stories is this: mind maps are not only organization and memory tools. they are dynamic methods for learning, teaching and communication, whether in the form of an apple tree or in a complex computer-generated diagram. Save information, brainstorm it, learn it, and communicate it.

P.S. There are no pictures in this post because I don't know what happened to the Apple Tree Mind Map, and this week's education example, although in technicolor, is probably one of the least visually appealing I have ever made. And my scanner is ill.

Snowmageddon Reading

I am always amazed at how my seemingly random choices of reading (and movies) serendipitously overlap. What I mean is, I will choose two movies with the same star or that are set in the same obscure place and I had no idea of this when I chose them. With books, randomly chosen, I'm amazed at how one will mention the other, or the content overlaps.

For my recent blizzard adventure (Snowmageddon I) in Cape May, I brought a stack of books chosen from my "Sabbatical 2010 Book-a-Week Reading List" and some others. these books turned out to be my primary source of entertainment after the electricity went out and stayed out for three days. here are the three books I actually read from the stack: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck, and Notes from the Shore by Jennifer Ackerman. I thought I was choosing very different books, but I was surprised (and delighted) by the overlap.

Travels with Charley, where Steinbeck leaves his home on Long Island and travels across the county with his dog in a customized pick-up truck, and Silent Spring, Rachel Carson's groundbreaking environmental book, were both published in the very early 1960s. In the very early 1960s, I was a newborn and living in the very house in which I was experiencing Snowmageddon I. (I lived there until I was about three and my father got a job in Manhattan to support this late-in-life surprise baby. He had just retired from the US Coast Guard.) We lived on Staten Island, but visited the Cape May house often on weekends and in the summer. I remember the mosquito trucks driving around the neighborhood spraying their fog. Between the Delaware Bay four blocks away and all the salt marshes in the area, we had a lot of mosquitoes and they especially loved my father and me. (Mom could stand still out there and not get a bite.)

Anyhow, both Steinbeck and Carson describe the same America but from different perspectives. His is that of a writer who observes people, and hers is that of a writer who observes nature. Both describe a country and culture that has changed enormously in about fifty years.

Jennifer Ackerman's Notes from the Shore is a much more recent book, published in 1995. It is a collection of nine essays about Cape Henlopen, across the Delaware Bay from Cape May. That is where the Cape May-Lewes Ferry takes us, but I had only driven through it and not explored until about a decade ago. Ackerman is also a nature observer and writer, and describes this environment which is very similar to Cape May in some ways and very different in others. There's way less tourist traffic for one thing, so I imagine Cape May probably used to be more like Cape Henlopen. One of her essays is dedicated to the osprey, a large bird of prey that was almost wiped out by DDT spraying in the 1950s and 1960s. The poison chemicals made their eggs so weak and brittle that the mama osprey would crack them when she went to roost. The osprey population has rebuilt itself now, and we can see pairs of them in the warm weather on their nests. By page 48 of Ackerman's book, she had mentioned both Rachel Carson and John Steinbeck. Carson was no surprise since she was largely responsible for the public awareness that put an end to blanket pesticide spraying that allowed the ospreys to come back. But Steinbeck? Well, it seems that John Steinbeck found, in his Long Island garden, a gigantic osprey nest (they usually are) that contained three shirts, a bath towel an arrow and a rake. How cool is that? (A naturalist in Cape May once told us that an osprey nest there contained a hula hoop.)

Since I'm documenting everything during this sabbatical, I wanted to show the relationships between these three books. A mind map wasn't going to work for this because it wouldn't allow me to compare. Instead, I took a stab at a concept map, which is a way to map out similarities and differences between things. since I'm still without a scanner, I took an iPhone shot of my concept map to share. Also, if you are interested in what I'm reading, I'm keeping a list on LibraryThing where I am known as MargaretMontet.

My first attempt at a Knowledge Map

After studying the Periodic Table of Visualization Methods (see previous post), and admiring the Knowledge Map, and deciding that those don't require too much drawing skill, I tried one. My printer/scanner is on the fritz (sorry Jackie), so I iPhoned it:

This is for an article on Twitter and Facebook and the different ways they are used. For the local publication that will be publishing the article, eventually, I brought in some local uses of the two tools.

Social Media is represented by the mainland on the left, and Twitter, Facebook, etc., are countries. In fainter print I've reminded myself of the various uses of each. The local users in Bucks County are represented on the green island. I made a few notes on their handles so that I can mention them in the article. The best quotes I received were from Peddler's Village (a quaint shopping village that features popular restaurants and many events), and Bucks County Community College (my main employer). Peddler's Village is linked to the mainland of Social Media by bridges, and BCCC runs a ferry service there. A road sign at the bottom points the way off-page to other social media countries I didn't treat in the article. I tried to work in a lighthouse because I could probably draw a decent one (better than the ferry anyway), but couldn't think how.

I enjoyed this exercise and, just like with a Mind Map, the act of drawing it helped me organize my thoughts and data. Just like with a Mind Map, many of the items works as prompts to help me remember the details I want to include. I'm hoping to wrap up this article tomorrow, but if I have to leave it for a few days, my Knowledge Map will help me pick up where I left off.

A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

I could sit and look at this Periodic Table all day. No, it has nothing to do with chemistry, of course, it illustrates many ways to visualize information.
http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html
Take a few moments to hover your cursor over the various elements, and see which your brains responds to most.

I'm partial to the aqua Concept Visualization elements: Mi for Mind Mapping and Co for Concept Mapping. However, I am drawn (no pun intended) the Compound Visualization elements in cornflower blue: Lm for Learning Map, Ri for Rich Picture, and Kn for Knowledge Map. I will probably be experimenting with the Knowledge Map for some current projects since it doesn't require above-average drawing skills. (There's the other part of the pun.)

Step back a bit and appreciate the Periodic Table itself. Organizing these visualization methods into such an elegant image took some research, deep original thought and obviously a knack for visualization.

I'm going to go stare at it for just a little while longer.

How I Use Mind Maps Most of the Time

Before my big Mind Map project begins to take on steam, I thought I might explain myself a little. I've been using Mind Maps for about twenty years, since I was introduced to them in a book club meeting. I realized their potential for note-taking right away, and frequently draw up a Mind Map before book discussions. Incidentally, I began using them for creating schedules and triaging deadlines, too. Later on, when I discovered Mind Mapping software at an education conference I realized that they were also great tools for presentation, both for organizing and presenting information, and I began using them at work.

Today, I use Mind Maps most often for organizing ideas and making connections between points of information when I write. I do a fair amount of freelance writing which involves research, visiting destinations and interviewing experts and public relations people. Information from all of these sources has to be organized somehow, and for me (a visual learner) a Mind Map is the most effective way. Not all my writing makes it into print or online publications. Sometimes I'm content to write about my travels on my other blog devoted to writing (http://margaretmontet.blogspot.com/) with photos and videos added. Sometimes these blogposts grow or combine to make bigger articles, but sometimes they just occupy space on my blog and remind me what I saw and what I thought while I was in a place.

The following picture is a typical Mind Map that I would make as an aid to writing about a place. I visited The Vizcaya Museum & Gardens in Miami at Christmastime and organized my information in a hand-drawn Mind Map. I like Mind Mapping software, and I use it almost always when other people are going to be looking at my notes, but I enjoy the process of creating the visual representation of my topic with colors, lines and varying font sizes when the Mind Map is just for me. Some thought had to go into the initial organization of this Mind Map before I started drawing. I decided to start with four main subtopics (History, Mansion Inside, Waterfront and Garden) before I started adding subtopics. The best Mind Maps have little pictures associated with their topics, but I shy away from attempting drawings, even the most rudimentary. I do enjoy using colors, and my brain tends to remember colors that I associate with concepts. I only took the time to apply colors to the first level of subtopics in the Vizcaya Mind Map, but sometimes I go a little crazy with my Crayola colored pencils (you'll see in my future posts here), coloring-in boxes and circles, reinforcing connecting lines, and shading entire areas.

So take a look at the Vizcaya Mind Map, and if it interests you check out the corresponding blogpost at http://margaretmontet.blogspot.com. I would love to read your comments, too!

Speaking from Mind Maps

Today I did a marathon presentation for 25 librarians: five hours on information literacy, best teaching practices, and emerging technologies for teaching. Five hours is a long time to speak, but I have my mind map to thank for organizing all of this information and keeping me on task while speaking. I had one main hand-drawn mind map to refer to during the workshop, and this launched me to two older mind maps and my Delicious.com site for certain sections.

No, I didn't project a mind map for the participants since there was just too much information and too many visuals to show. The mind maps were for my purposes only. But, I did show them the mind map I was using and I made my mind map business cards with this address and my Twitter name on them available. My Delicious site also has many mind map links on it (including this blog), so I am hoping I at least created some curiosity about the effectiveness of mind maps.

If anyone from today's session is reading this, please comment! I'd love to know what you think.

Twittering for Mind Maps

I am delighted with the amount of mind map information I have gathered with Twitter! As an experiment, I set up a second Twitter account dedicated to mind mapping as part of my upcoming sabbatical project. I intended this to be a way to share interesting sites, software, and uses for mind maps, but I am learning much more than I'm contributing so far. After I did a search for mind maps and mind mappers on Twitter, I was rewarded with a host of Twittering mind map experts from around the world. It seems that mind mappers also tend to be Twitterers and bloggers! Now in addition to my project journal, I have begun a binder of Other People's Mind Maps that I find especially useful and aesthetically pleasing, and I've added to my mind map links on www.delicious.com. (Don't worry, mind map creators, the Librarian's Code of Honor etched on my brain requires me to give credit to any work that is not my own in any of the products I create from this project.) My mind map sabbatical project does not actually begin until January 2010, so this is all advance work until then. For preliminary stuff, it is very exciting.

Therefore, this post has three purposes:

1. to invite any interested mind mappers out there to follow my mind mapping Twitter self at www.twitter.com/margaretmndmpng and peek at those that I follow, and,
2. to urge researchers to use Twitter as a research tool in order to find interesting and current perspectives on their topics, and,
3. to prove that mind maps are a practical tool for writers, speakers, teachers, and anyone who needs to organize information, brainstorm, or improve memory.

What do you think?