Friday, September 7, 2007

Mind Mapping: "Systems In Our World and Beyond



The concept shown here is called “Systems In Our World and Beyond”. I chose this angle because I wanted to link the different systems found on earth and in space. The overall concept was “Systems” and the title, “Systems in Our World and Beyond” is actually just a branch of this whole concept of a system. The main goal was to let students know that systems are everywhere, and they exist so that there is function. Through this concept, I hope to teach and extend on the idea of a “system” so that students come to the conclusion that they are actually part of a working system that they must take part in to ensure that the system keeps working.

Creating this “Mind Map” actually helped me think deeper about this concept that I have been working on, and to me that is the most important lesson I learned from this activity. I love working with big concepts or ideas, and then connecting them to smaller, more specific ideas to teach things in an integrated fashion. I learned this from Mr. Rob Schultz. Thanks to him, I learned that the best way to teach the many objectives found in our Standards and Benchmarks can be linked together if you find something that a good handful of them share. The process of putting it all together through the webbing process was a very helpful one since it helped me make connections that I didn’t think of before. However, putting it down on paper was a different story when it came time to use the Inspiration program.

I actually loved the Inspiration program because it was so easy to use. Since I have already organized my thoughts out on paper, I just had to put it in an outline form that I found in the program. This outline form can then be viewed as a web, and, TADA, I created my own “Mind Map”. It was so great to find a program that could create a web from an outline instead of having to draw circles and lines on Microsoft Word. I know that I will continue to use Inspiration. I think that the only thing I would do differently next time is to be more creative with my mapping. I’ll only be able to do this with more exploration of Inspiration.

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