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February 17, 2005

Stuf I used to know: Mind Maps

It occurred to me last night, while reading Marcia's blog, that I used to know some stuff that I often forget. So I've created a new category mostly for myself to remind myself of stuff I used to know, so that I can use it in the life I'm creating going forward.

In this case, the category is "invention," and the subject is composition, or even (*gasp*) writing. Marcia wrote about her invention exercise of making a list of topics to be covered, and that made me think about a mind map. Do you know about mind maps? I used to. I even used to use them - delightful, fun tool that can involve colors and pictures, circles, lines, arrows, diagrams, or other visual forms that both arrange thoughts and stimulate thoughts. Since I got to graduate school, I've never once used one. But now I'd like to. I'd even like to use the scratch outline. The sometimes simple, sometimes seemingly basic, tools we offer our students are tools we, the teachers/graduate students, can be using too. I even wrote that to myself once, in my teaching journal, that I listened to myself teaching my students and realized I could learn a lot about doing my own work by following my own hints.

So back to mind mapping. If you haven't done this before, I will be hard pressed to explain what it is in pure type, but if you ever had to diagram a sentence, the beginning mind map looks very similar, except on each diagonal there is another tangential idea, instead of a speech part identifier. In my mapping, there is a word in the center, with a circle around it, and then several spokes out to other circles with other words, each with other spokes. If I had a list, I might have circles around some words with arrows pointing to other words, or cross-arrows, or squares and circles and triangles to group ideas.

The sort of ground breaker text on mind mapping is by Tony Buzan, called Using Both Sides of Your Brain.. It's an older text--first edition 1974--and a small text, but the ideas in it are great. Buzan has gone on to write other books about mind mapping and maximizing the creative power of the brain, and other folks have written about mind mapping since then. I used to teach it in my corporate life, as a method of problem solving or innovating. Somehow I hadn't made the connection to using it in paper drafting, but now that I have had this reminder from Marcia, maybe I can remember to use that tool in the future.

Posted by cageyer at February 17, 2005 03:49 PM

Comments

Posted by: Marcia at February 20, 2005 01:31 AM