Creating a Mind Map can be a useful tool for all students in your classes. Because themap can be used in so many ways it addresses several of the different intelligences andlearning styles of your students. This tool is easy to use and demostrate. It requiresminimal technology skills yet the end product is technology driven. It can be manipultedand changed at any time allowing students to experiment with organizing ideas andinformation. The visual depiction of their information lends well to different types of assignments including research. This tool is a great way to assess the comprehensionlevels of your students in an alternate form.The Mind Map allows students to organize and classify information. For instance, a mapcan be created for outlining the unit or chapters of a textbook. Students might berequired to create an outline while reading an assigned part of the text. When their outline is entered in Mind Map it then creates a visual map of the information they havecovered. Another way to use the map might be to outline the units to be covered over a period of time in a class. In my 6 week Health classes the students create an outline of what they would like to see covered or what they think should be covered in the shorttime period that we have for the course. This makes them feel involved and moreinvested in the topics that we study.How to use Text 2 Mind Map:
The Text 2 Mind Map takes a list of words and creates a map.
The words for the map need to be listed in an outline form using the tab key for indenting and the shift-tab key for outdenting.
The first word of your list will become the center of the map and therefore should be the main title, subject, or topic.
The example on the Text 2 Mind Map site uses the months of the year as thecenter of the map.
Following in the outline form, next would be the seasons and then the actualnames of the months. The seasons are indented under the topic and the months areindented under the seasons.The physical look of the map can be altered to meet your needs after creating the mapIn the box in the upper right hand corner of the map page you will find several controls.
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“Full screen” and “freeze map” will make the map large enough to fit the entirecomputer screen and hold the map in it’s place.
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“Font” gives you selection of color and size for the words.
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