Activity

I started teaching the concept of mind mapping to my oldest two children recently. They are at the point where they are reading a significant level of books and I want to get them to comprehending what they’re reading. I want them to start to create book reports or oral presentations. However, if they try, they sometimes come across that age old problem of staring at a blank little bit of paper and are nearly sure how to get started and how they will fill the page. The problem is that they are attempting to start without any structure. You can easily get paralyzed just wondering how to get to the finish of a page or two with out a plan. I’d like to help them start on the right foot and consider their subject instead of thinking about what seems like the daunting nature of the task at hand.

AI Mind Mapping had already shown them the idea of an overview and talked in their mind about the structure of a five paragraph report. This very traditional structure comes with an introductory paragraph, three details about your subject, and a conclusion. However when you’re coming up with the material to fill the report, you’re still drawing a blank particularly when you try to think about the order you want to cover your points simultaneously that you are trying to generate them.

Because the time I grew up, there are several new skills that make the process a lot easier. I explained to them that I take advantage of mind maps in the beginning of the process of organizing my thoughts. Mind mapping has less structured than an overview but it is not quite as free-form as brainstorming. I discover that brainstorming will not give enough direction and I don’t think that’s very conducive to the way that folks think. I think it is much easier to make a mind map and once the mind map is done, prioritize the nodes within the mind map to produce an outline. Once I have an outline I’m ready to start my article. I believe that one of easy and simple ways to create the article from this point is to pretend that I’m speaking with someone who doesn’t know about the subject that I’m presenting. I approach it in a conversational style. Or if my imaginary audience is familiar with the subject i quickly am probably going to be telling them about new details or new information regarding that subject. Once I have an idea of how to overcome this in a conversational style, I can use the mind map as a guide to generating a written report.

At this point it really is probably smart to define what mind mapping actually is. A mind map is started with a central topic and it is put in a circle in the center of a piece of paper. Alternatively, software can be used to build the mind map. Lines are extended from the primary circle to produce a new node for every idea that branches from that main idea. The branches can set off in any direction, it generally does not really matter at this point. The ideas that go in nodes also go within circles. A fresh node could be generated one for just about any idea that is linked to the topic. It is the part of my mapping that is closest to brainstorming. Additionally, there are sub-nodes which can be added to each node in your brain map. This will break that node down into more detail. This will be achieved in somewhat of a free format, rapid manner.

Once all of the topics are listed on a mind map, the nodes could be reviewed and filtered out if they don’t really belong there. The nodes may also be prioritized. They might be numbered in order worth focusing on or in the order that they will be covered in the report or presentation. On paper, this is often done by simply writing numbers on each one of the main nodes. Now that the nodes come in order, this process can also be applied to the sub-nodes. Once it really is done, the mind map can easily used in an outline.

When I develop a mind map, what I normally do next is record myself talking about the subjects in the order that I’ve chosen on my Music player. I imagine that I am speaking to someone concerning this subject. It could take a number of takes to acquire a clean recording without pauses. Each recording gets a little easier. Once I have a recording that I am happy with, I take advantage of computer software that translates speech to text to transcribe this article right into a word processor. I pay attention to the recordings with my headphones and repeat it into a microphone with the software running. Once I’ve my document, I can edit it just how I would edit any document that I’d write. If I desire to take it a step further, I can now browse the edited document aloud with a microphone and record it in audio format on my computer so I can have it in multiple formats.