Idea Maps for Learning
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Idea Maps
In a learning process, to summarise somebody else's words through keyphrases and keywords, is preferable - there are good reasons for it. Idea maps is one way among others of displaying sensible keynotes. Visual displays can improve memory, and gradually foster better thinking.Keynotes are for learning. Learning is for gaining solvency, or keeping it.
Idea Maps
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| Fugure: Trunk, branches, and twigs. |
If you cut down a pine or another tree and look at the stub from above, you may see something that looks like the illustration. Kuges are like arrays of branches of a trunk, and the branches may have twigs, leaves, flowers, and fruits on them too.
The centre of the idea map is trunk-like, main connections (associations) branch out, some have side-branches, and twigs spread out from any of them, in principle - at times from the stem too. There is room for that in such a design - an idea map.
What is shown by leafy twigs is clusters of relatable ideas. Just think of a tree seen from above. Maybe you have sawed it off to see more clearly. The central items form a core - the trunk. Keynotes or key words then branch out in an organised fashion around that pivotal trunk. There are many ways for branches to grow and intertwine too.
When you assemble keynotes and place them in relation to each other, you end up with one or more of these: a scheme, another survery, or some table or graph.
This display is of exactly the same type as the "flower design". When you take down notes in the form of structured idea maps, try to take them down neatly and arrange them according to "the wisdom of petals". That is, association lines may be clustered and organised into a higher unity - the map or chart, like petals form a flower. If you learn to arrange groups (clusters) of items as if they were flower petals around a calyx, your learning maybe sped up somewhat. The petals compare to association loops or such "coils".Idea Map Essentials
When you draw an idea map, this pattern should be fit for many lines of thought, and interconnecting some of them too. Idea maps are spatial arrays with a centre area. They help seing connections and interconnections. They should help you - by the neat display - to get some overview, see connections (draw branching lines - thich and thin if you care), use them for reviews and thereby remember more and better if you do the steps all right.First, draw neatly, second, be accurate and connect points that are linkable. Third, brief reviews of the keynotes you have connected in the chart.
By such charts you have a means to mobilise several of your mental skills, through a very helpful abstract of essentials where keywords stand out, and are interconnected, and organised.
By training yourself in chart-making of this kind, you develop skills in non-secondhand thinking, not only in summing up ideas of others. That is to say, good thinking can be stepped up, good learning too, in time. Some may reach higher levels of learning, others may get their own insights to - insights had preferably be verified. That is not always easy. Be on the safe side. At any rate, Benjamin Bloom and others have exposed six steps on the way to higher levels of learning - and in addition there is original thought and fresh insights that could need to be "brushed up" in some cases, or could need sound proofs in other cases. A large part of the science endeavour is testing of ideas (hypotheses and the like).
Idea charts - "blossoms" or "trunk sections" or whatever - could help learning for those who go all the way and use such figures aligned to how the long-term memory (LTM) works. And you can truncate items well by many sorts of visual displays - if you like it better than indented lists as they are found in such as chapter surveys. Mind that both ways can serve you OK.
There is more than one way to go about learning. A key to developing our brains is proper use, nice challenges, and methods so that we may solve recurrent problems too. Better thinking - better recall and perhaps better processing of ideas - may be had by proper brain use, for the connections between brain cells grow by use, says Marion Diamond [in Gross 25, 30]. These helpful points are exposed here: [LINK]
Good and even better understanding can be steadily developed, and you do not have to look silly for drawing idea maps: The methods is already much used, and found helpful. You may get honoured for handy thinking by such means and many others. There is much to learn. There is a survey here: [LINK]
Building sensible maps of keynotes amounts to hard work
In visual displays, "cognitive maps", we place a keynote or perhaps also an image in the centre of the page. To keep central issues in a central field helps focus Or, to stay with the flower image, they are the petals.A trunk-branch scheme or a calyx-petals design gives very much freedom for variations. Branches may grow out later - you may want to add to older charts after some time. The overall design allows for it.
Bear up with poetic words like sky flowers and rustic images of trees and flowers for the time being. The sceneries and labels may help you to remember the whole of the business we're inside almost at once, if you graps what they tell in the context. The imagery and the words can serve as pegs for your own thinking as time goes by.
If you go on building up keynote charts of the kinds indicated above and on previous pages, back them up by revisiting old charts now and then, to get more into your long-term memory, and thus be empowered in your mind use. A fair learning process depends on much more than keynotes, no matter how well they are selected and presented. The steps called O TAKG SPIR help too along with many and solid pauses between quite short study sessions. As we grow older, the length of the sessions may decrease and the length of the integrated pauses may increase, but all the same, much is served by that approach, granted that active learning may be hard.
You may solidify your learning by taping parts of it and listen to the recordings now and then. Such passive learning is fine for recall.
Mind Maps
The main ways of drawing an idea map are about the same as for mind maps by the British psychologist Tony Buzan. He recommends:- A coloured image in the centre.
- Main ideas branch off the centre.
- Main ideas can be in larger letters than secondary ideas.
- The statements to recalled may be formed into succinct statements, like axioms. Learning is often helped by short statements. Most cultures on this planet have devised proverbs and lessons accordingly. Consider writing either short statements that may "sit" for long, or very terse keyword skeletons. Buzan goes into the latter. We prefer the former. One good reason is that you probably recall the first meanings better by short phrases - get ampler associations. It's not that easy with keywords. Try to find out how terse your keynotes should be to aid maximum recall. Bear in mind in so doing that the long intervals between recalls, the greater chances for decay for just single words, probably. This is to say: the better you memorise the first three weeks or so, the shorter the keywords may be - assumedly.
- Printed words help later (either upper or lower case letters, or a combination of upper and lower cases).
- The mind maps of Buzan employs lines to help the linking (associative) process on and up. If you take to it, his rules (of the thumb) are: Words should be printed on the lines (in order to give your mind a clearer image to remember). Alternatives may give you ready-made lines to the statements to consider. Feel free to choose what connective method appeals the most to you. Or still better: experiment with them to detect what assists your understanding and memory best. Some leeway is often a boon against getting slavish.
- Lines should be connected (so as to help your memory to associate). You may connect statements with colours. Try plastic crayons. Pen or ink lines may work well too.
- Buzan advocates many images. However, if you don't come up with any image in a lecture or class where you take down notes and time is too short, fill in sensible keywords instead.
- In the case of loose petalled maps feel free to use numbers to code or put things in order, or do it in any way that looks nice and works just well for you in the long and short and middle run . . .
- For coding and connecting we use mainly:
- colours,
- numbers;
- perhaps also arrows, but in moderate degree
Mind that there is room for alternatives far and wide. Long-term memory depends more on sensible meanings than visual or graphic displays, it sems fair to say.
Let the memory help handling. Idea maps are for making essentials
realisable, and can obviously assist better learning if you apply the principles of good memory work (learning).
If you like to group or chunk keynotes, that is like forming broad petals with little overlapping. This approach can be standardised further into reasonable schemata, and schemata can ease learning also.
Claimed Mind-Mapping Advantages
Barry and Tony Buzan claim Buzan's mind-mapping has these advantages over linear note-making/taking:
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| Approximation to a simple Idea Map to study. |
- Time saved by noting: 50-95 per cent.
- Time saved by reading: over 90 per cent of total.
- Time saved reviewing MM notes: over 90 per cent.
- Time saved by not having to search for key words: more than 90 per cent.
- Concentration on real issues enhanced.
- Essential key words made more easily discernible.
- Juxtaposed key words (nearness, linkage)
- Appropriate associations between key words helped
- Recall stimulated, and left-right brain use stimulated. [Perhaps not]
- Flow of thought encouraged
- Natural eagerness to learn can be helped or preserved.
- Regular use can favour receptiveness, confidence and alertness. [Buzan and Buzan 1995, 89-90]
The Lay of the Land
- The books on display on the shelves or having them in the computer do not matter as much as having read them.
- Having read a book is less than remembering its salient lessons.
- Based on memory you may even seek to apply the key points in your own life.
- Visualise the things you would like to come true for you. Calmness and liking what you are doing helps practice and combats stress. [Gelb and Buzan 1995, 54-55]
Felling a Tree and Chewing on Text Books
BEFORE we fell a tree, we make sure to have or keep what it takes. Keep your axe or chain saw and gear in shape. Sharpen what needs to be sharpened. A blunt axe or chain makes work less convenient. Before a learning session, be rested, adjust your brain as needs be - this corresponds to sharpening the axe. How? Train yourself in focusing through good yoga methods of meditation is a very nice way in general.Make sure you don't study for very long in each session. Many fall short in this. They study on for hours without breaks. Take a break after at least 20-25 minutes, memory research indicates - and proper study methods had better make allowance for it. The length of a break between study sessions may be ten minutes or so, depending on age and health and fitness. Study sessions be made shorter with age, and pauses in between them longer.
Opposed to the smart ways of study, some deceive themselves into reading on and on in robotlike manner. They think that since they understand what they are reading, they may keep on in one session for hourse on end till they are exhausted. This is wrong. One thing is understanding, another is remembering, and learning depends very much on the latter. The most solid worth of studying lies in what is recalled. And the recall operates differently than the understanding. Optimal study tunes in to how we remember - and therefore requires shorter intervals and breaks during study sessions. Memory curves illustrate it neatly.
⊕ Some meditation methods have been researched, and found to influence brain waves. TM is "the best in test". There is very much research on it.
Help Your Brain Waves
A litte meditation may work well on the large brain. Refrain from making a learning session long, but take frequent pauses. And read with as much interest and eagerness as you can (in the flow). There are technicalites of learning to help you with it. [Gross; Buzan 1989]If you do not like what you are studying, there is the hope that you can come to appreciate it if you stand by technical sides to learning as those above. Interest may arise and develop with calm focus. What you focus on may turn interesting. It happens to many students when they master their subjects more or better. That is the secret.
Tony Buzan further shows how to prepare for learning sessions, choosing suitable "bites" of learning, so to speak, and well - if you learn the best ways of learning, you can get further and enjoy more. [LINK]
Public Education in Norway
Most public edication - at least in Norway - is a fundamentally insensible waste of time, effort and energy. The example: In a study by Jarand Rystad [Jr] in the 1990s, he let older university students and researchers attend an examination in mathematics for the second grade at NTNU (the technical university) in Trondheim. All flunked, and half of them did not hand in anything at all. Norwegian researchers - A summary of Rystad's study is published in Norwegian on this site. [LINK]Where people learn for passing examinations mainly - as in some universities - what they can bring to mind of the curriculum after a few months tends to be very little and fragmentary, and probably not good enough to pass an exam then. To some this does not matter - a job may be what they are studying for, and not life-long learning with interest and good recall. But one should be warned that after a fornight without reviews afterwards, perhaps just five percent of what a lecture was about, can be remembered. It gets worse with time. Count that in too.
Proper study methods can offset or counteract a part of the unreasonable and rather unnessecary waste. There are benefits of cramming and copying mostly for examinations too - such as passing examinations to get a job and what follows. It obviously helps some. There are other forms of charades too in a society, but this is presumably the basic one. The play is on formal competence (grades and other tokens), while real competence is dwarfed, and not quite up to the qualifications that are formally indicated by grades and diplomas.
To correct the schooling charade it is not enough to pump more money into the public school system and train all sorts of teachers an extra year: it is adhering to the things that yield excellent learning that is most likely needed. By not focusing on learning much may be squandered and education become the parody that Noam Chomsky speaks of in, "Typically they [the students] come in interested, and the process of education is a way of driving that defect out of their minds."
It appears that many costly study ways are semi-ritual and ossified, without good enough reasons for keeping them up as they are. Homework may not offer any great help either, shows Alfie Kohn. Children and students neither get better grades nor better study habits from it, he finds, based on 300 studies from the United States and several other Western countries. Grades are outer motivations for "control from above", a means to keep young ones in dependency, a means to forcing many to read things with reluctance and growing aversion, the result of which seems to make many crazy in the long run, not only oblivious and outsmarted.
If learning is not fun, take time to find out the reasons. Have you given time to follow up your sincere interests? Have you learnt to study with calm and reassurance through good study methods?
If learning is not fun, you have been outsmarted somehow.
⊕ The play is on getting formal competence.
"It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for what this delicate little plant needs more than anything, besides stimulation, is freedom. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty." [Albert Einstein]
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Literature
Bloom, Benjamin, et al. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals. New York: McKay, 1956.
Buzan, Tony, with Barry Buzan. The Mind Map Book. Rev. ed. London: BBC Books, 1995.
Buzan, Tony. Make the Most of Your Mind. Rev. ed. London: Pan, 1988a.
Buzan, Tony. Speed Reading. Rev. ed. London: David and Charles, 1988b.
Buzan, Tony. Use Your Head. New, rev. ed. London: BBC Books, 1989.
Gelb, Michael J., and Tony Buzan. Lessons from the Art of Juggling. London: Aurum Press, 1995.
Gross, Ronald. Peak Learning: A Master Course in Learning How to Learn. Rev. ed. New York: J. Tarcher/Putnam, 1999.
Herrigel, Eugen. Zen i bueskytingens kunst. Oslo: Gyldendal, 1971. Kohn, Alfie. Why Our Children Get Too Much of a Bad Thing. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2006. Ringom, Bjørn. Kreative hukommelseskart (mind-maps) (Creative memory maps). Lillehammer: IML, 1987.
Rystad, Jarand. "Alt glemt på grunn av ubrukeleg eksamensform? En empirisk undersøkelse av Matematikk 2 eksamen ved NTH." I UNIPED nr 2-3, 1993:29-50.
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