Thursday 24 September 2009

Concept map of connectivism

I started creating a concept map on connectivism for my learning on CCK09 a few days ago and have been updating it since. Added some more links about scale-free networks today and started a 'strengths and weaknesses' of connectivism section.

http://share.xmind.net/dean_jenkins/connectivism/

I remember Tony Buzan on television as a kid and used 'mind maps' quite extensively through school and university. I was quite frustrated with their use in medicine since - from my perspective - the concepts in medicine were quite easy to understand but the reams of lists and facts were not. Mind maps were not of much use. I was even more surprised at the success of a book in medicine that included the authors' mind maps to help students revise. It seemed a rather odd way of communicating knowledge since one person's mind map may be different to another's ... and isn't most of the learning in creating the map itself?

So it is quite interesting to return to mind mapping using software rather than pencil and paper. XMind allows me to easily share the map with others and display it for them without the need of additional software. It also works on my laptop (Windows) and my PC (ubuntu). I'm going to try and keep it simple and not add specific XMind features so that it is compatible with FreeMind. In a year's time my choice of mind mapping tool might be very different.

I'd like to explore collaborative concept mapping and wondered if anyone on CCK09 reading this would care to comment on any particular part of the map. Does my concept map network resonate with my learning network? Do we share the same misunderstandings? Will the true insights (if any) be spread? Is there a concept map wiki version I wonder? That would be an anarchic tool.

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