Forum LAMS for Tech-Heads - General Forum: Re: Re: Re: Μind Map or Concept/Mind Map

By: Spyros Papadakis

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Every teacher has her or his own style of teaching. More teachers are adjusting their approach depending on their students’ learning needs.

Both are educational techniques that they have pros and cons.

MIND MAP

A mind map is a diagram used to visually organize information. A mind map is hierarchical and shows relationships among pieces of the whole. It is often created around a single concept, drawn as an image in the center of a blank page, to which associated representations of ideas such as images, words and parts of words are added. Major ideas are connected directly to the central concept, and other ideas branch out from those.

A central topic declares the subject of the mind map. First-level topics, sometimes known as “basic ordering ideas,” define the scope of the topic to be covered by the mind map. Sub-topivcs radiating from them are known as “child topics.” A mind map may contain as many layers of topics and subtopics needed to met the mind map’s purpose. Topics may be embellished with shape colors, fonts, size and ciolor. In addition, icons and images can be attached to mind maps.

Mind maps:
Tend to be more flexible and personal than concept maps.
Are used to slice and dice the map’s central topic or concept in multiple ways.
May contain images and color, to make them more visually stimulating
Topics may only have a single parent



CONCEPT MAP

A concept map or conceptual diagram is a diagram that depicts suggested relationships between concepts. It is a graphical tool that instructional designers, engineers, technical writers, and others use to organize and structure knowledge.
A concept map typically represents ideas and information as boxes or circles, which it connects with labeled arrows in a downward-branching hierarchical structure. The relationship between concepts can be articulated in linking phrases such as causes, requires, or contributes to.

Concept maps:
Are commonly used to organize and represent tacit knowledge.
Usually contain general concepts at the top of the map, with more specific concepts arrayed hierarchically below.
Connector lines usually contains keywords or phrases that summarize the relationship between the topics they connect. Such as topic a “causes” topic B.
Topics may be cross-linked with each other to depict more complex relationships between topics. Topics in mind maps may only have one parent; in a concept map, a topic may have multiple connector lines, each one representing a different relationship.

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I use both, I find mind maps are fantastic when brain storming or trying to understand an idea which then gets translated into a document, presentation or training course as they are quick get all info on one page and you have to decide when to stop!!! Saying that a limitation is the single parent is a poor excuse as you can map and sub map or as I do use a map to scope a single piece of work

I use concept maps when I have a specific issue / task I want to work throughto identify potential solutions or way forward.

Posted by Spyros Papadakis