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Tag: Mindmeister

Mind Mapping and Learning Support

I believe in mind/concept maps, having written about them over the years. Mind maps support UDL while often enhancing learning strategies (e.g., brain dump, chunking, grouping, showing connections, etc.) When web-based mind mapping tools like Mindmeister came onto the scene, we made a giant leap in how digital mind maps can help Replace – Augment/Amplify – Transform (RAT Model) learning that previously used analog tools. The collaborative nature of online concept maps between students and teachers can help the process, create, and communicate one’s understanding.

In chats with a learning support teacher and a history teacher, I made a mental list of how digital mind maps could support their excellent instructional strategies. The following are their strategies and my take on how concept maps could augment/amplify or transform learning.

Brain Dump: The teachers described what we sometimes see in students who struggle to get their ideas from their minds down their arms and out into text. Brainstorming for ideas and just getting the story out of one’s head are supported by mind maps. One can keypad the ideas or use voice-to-text tools to support this process. Mind maps with this function go a step further by giving students a big digital bucket to make their ideas visible or intentionally saving them from separating buckets from the start. This connects to…

Chunking: Voice-to-text or typing in mind maps helps students break information down into more bite-size pieces. Students can take the whole brain dump, cut sections and paste them into their branch cells. They can also do their initial dumps into individual buckets. Mindmeister on a mobile device allows for voice-to-text by using the microphone key on the keypad. Digital mind maps provide a place to embed images-sketches-connection arrows-video-audio-web links, in other words, sketchnoting. 🙂 Back to UDL, giving students multiple ways to express their ideas is supported by concept maps.

Jigsaws: When topics and research are divided between individuals or groups, an online mind map can provide the workspace to curate information, resources, images, etc. When the jigsaw comes together, the connector tool shows relationships. Tools like Inspiration that give you the text box on the connector augment the learning pushing students to think and label the connections.

Routines and Protocols: My Web Resources for Learning site demonstrates ways technology can support and enhance visible thinking routines. The NSRF puts out an extensive listing of protocols to review to see where concept maps come in handy. Look through the routines to see where mind maps are listed as the supporting tool.

Templates & Charts: Question prompts around text, etc., are a mainstay for teachers providing students with scaffolding using labeled textboxes, charts with input areas, listed procedures, supporting vocabulary with text, and drawing areas to visualize the words. Focusing on mind maps, one can see how they support sequencing, grouping by categories, cause, and effect, big ideas supported by details, compare and contrast, etc.

There are entire websites dedicated to mind maps and how they can support a great many instructional strategies and thinking processes. My effort here hopefully connects to what others are sharing.

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TPACKing with Web-based Content & Creation Tools

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Has your school or district purchased web-based individualized student learning systems like DreamBoxmyONReflex Math, or Raz-Kids? Do your students use web-based creation tools that provide individual student accounts like Google AppsMindMeister, or Wixie? If so, who provides the planning, implementation, ongoing support, and data analysis bringing together the technologypedagogy, and content knowledge of your learning community? How are you making the most of these web-based tools to make a difference for your students? In other words, who is on your TPACKing Team?

We hear a great deal about the implementation of 1:1 device programs. While not as expensive or headline-grabbing (think LA District iPads), the software/web tools make the hardware come alive in the hands of our learners. Schools and districts can spend a lot of money on learning platforms like myON but need help to leverage them so all students can use them when they are underutilized. We can also need teachers to use the provided data to individualize student learning programs further. With barriers of very busy teachers, overcrowded curricula, high-stakes testing, etc., it makes sense to construct plans to support these learning platforms to make them successful.

This post focuses on web-based tools where students have accounts, but it can apply to any school-wide tool rollout. The student accounts provide teachers with valuable formative data and easy digital access to generative student work that teachers use to meet individual student needs further. The purchase of expensive content providers like BritannicaEBSCO, etc., also needs the same planning and collaborative TPACKing. Still, there needs to be data or access to student learning products that can be leveraged with products like Reflex Math or Google Slides.

Connecting to TPACK, I see the rolling out of web tools as a natural place to employ the collaborative team approach to TPACKing. I post about it in this blog, and we discuss it on the Ed Tech Co-Op podcast. Another resource on Team TPACKing is the article that Mark Hofer, Margaret Carpenter, and I wrote entitled “Collaborative Planning and Design for Technology Integration.”

So now, what does this “collaborative planning and design” look like? Let’s say a school is planning to purchase DreamBox, which is expensive. Team TPACKing provides a construct to get everyone on board to put the tool in the hands of the students and to make sure the technology, pedagogy, and math knowledge come together to make the most of the learning experiences. I would bring stakeholders to discuss and share ideas to set goals, plan the implementation, and set recurring dates to review the initiative’s status. Who might come to the table to TPACK together?

I am thinking of the usual suspects (inside joke – see our article):

  • teachers
  • administrators
  • instructional technologist
  • math coordinator
  • learning specialists

While the planning table might get a little too crowded, I would include a few parents and students at some point to get their insights. A big topic, especially in some elementary schools, is homework and screen time. Another reason why I am focusing this post on web tools is because students and teachers should have 24/7 access to as many learning resources as possible. I also believe in the power of blended and personalized learning, with students constructing their personal learning systems with school-provided tools and the ones they find themselves.

Speaking of students, I am a big believer in piloting initiatives to gather data from users’ experiences to plan the full rollout. This is where the pilot’s students, teachers, and parents can come together with the planning team to design better how the full implementation will go if it goes at all. The learning platform providers can set you up for 30-day trials, so compare what various companies provide. There are many competitors for math and reading skill-building and database providers. Design rubrics and feedback mechanisms to further engage your TPACK style “thinking hat” to find the right system provider for the task.

Our article hits on the idea of the “distributive expertise” that a team of educators brings to the planning table, which connects to TPACK and the convergence of the types of knowledge (technology-pedagogy-content). Back to the DreamBox example, the instructional technologist shares technology knowledge, but as we know, several other team members can bring technical expertise to the table. When we think of math content knowledge, teachers and the math coordinator come to mind. They, along with the instructional technologist, administrators, and learning specialists, bring pedagogy knowledge to the planning. Thus the distributive expertise of the TPACKing Team is set to build on the collective ideas of the Team to creatively plan, implement and provide ongoing support for advancing tool initiatives to enhance student learning.

Summing this up, ask yourself, how is your school making the most of your learning tools? Is there a plan in place for each? Who helped develop the plans? Who are your leads in leading and supporting the initiatives? What feedback are you getting from your users and supporters (parents)? What scaffolding is in place to support the tools? Are you taking advantage of your administration’s and staff’s expertise in using the tools? What are you learning from the data provided by the student accounts? Over time, how might you adapt your use of the tools to enhance learning for your students?

And as you look at the technology, pedagogy, and content aspects of the learning platforms, remember that, in most cases, the technology is simply the delivery system. In the past, the paper provided the math, English, ESL, etc., content in books and workbooks. The tools are about the skills and content learning of the discipline they support. This should guide you in deciding who will lead, present, and guide the learning. We must understand that our world is digital and not let technology be a barrier for teachers or parents. Keep focusing on the learning goals, whether math, English, science, or whichever subject area.

With the start of 2016, it may be time for a new year’s resolution to assess your community’s use of learning tools to bring your TPACKing Team together to find ways to impact learning for your students!

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ESPRAT+G and Making Connections

“ESPRAT is an acronym for Economy, Society, Political Structure, Religion, The Arts, and Technology. It is used for analyzing six broad aspects of how human efforts shape their “culture.” Geography focuses upon natural landforms. By applying the questions and definitions linked in the left-hand menu for each category of ESPRAT+G, scholars can design and specify their inquiry into conditions faced by people in particular places or at a particular period in their history.” 

This description and approach to learning about social studies comes from the ESPRAT+G website my wife and I created to help guide our students’ study of culture and societies. We came across the ESPRAT+G construct while teaching in Saudi Arabia in the 90’s. Don Zimbrick, a social studies teacher, introduced it and guided us as young social teachers to think about teaching our students to think not only as historians but also as economists, sociologists, etc. The ESPRAT+G analysis approach helped scaffold the learning for our students, teaching them to categorize their learning and make connections.

Don was all about making connections. Helping his students see how each ESPRAT+G category influenced one another made history come alive for all our students. We grew as social studies teachers, learning that the content was secondary to the connections students were making within ESPRAT+G, their lives, other historical events, and the present day.

While providing categories for the study of social studies is not new, it is helpful to give students terms like we do in Language Arts with 6+1 Traits for Writing to guide them in thinking and speaking when analyzing culture, societies, and historical events. The teachers at my school use the History Alive textbook series, which provides similar categories in how the content is organized and taught.

ESPRAT+G can also be helpful in Language Arts, as my wife Margaret reports in her work with LA teachers at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, where she is the Library Media Specialist. Margaret reports that the ESPRAT+G analytical tool can be the connector that brings social studies and LA teachers together in collaboration. English teachers often want to build a historical context for studying novels, especially social, political, and economic conditions. Guiding the students to analyze the society and period the novel is set in allows for more understanding as the students connect to what was happening in time and place.

Margaret uses our ESPRAT+G site with all of its questions to support the students in their LA classes to dig deeper to understand better the messages from the novels they are reading. It is important to remember that even at a school like “TJ,” the students have not had complete coursework in economics, sociology, political science, or art history, let alone history classes, to know which questions to ask.

After teaching the inquiry lessons using ESPRAT+G, Margaret shifts to librarian mode to help guide the students on how and where to search to find answers to their questions. She also leads students to resources on literary criticism to help them understand the elements driving a particular literary movement.

Margaret reports that the three-way collaboration between herself, the social studies teachers, and the English teachers is paying off. Students are tasked with choosing one category of ESPRAT+G to connect to an aspect of the novel. While they look through one lens in their research, the students discover how interrelated the ESPRAT+G disciplines are.

Third Graders at my school also connect using ESPRAT+G via the RegionsQuest WebQuest. Learning to categorize and make connections definitely can start at a young age. 🙂

Third Graders and Workflow (Learningflow)

What is your workflow system? Which tools do you use in your personal and professional world to manage information in performing tasks? In education, we talk more about a student’s personal learning system, but it still comes down to work/learning and the process of being efficient and successful. Students use hardware, such as iPads, computers, and phones loaded with software/apps that help them find information, process and curate it, and communicate their findings and understanding.

The Third Graders at my school are on track to develop their own personal learning systems. The image above is a screenshot of one way the students are researching specific animals. The left side of the image is of a browser open to the Encyclopedia Britannica. The right side is of the Inspiration mind mapping software.

Many of the Third Graders use this split screen technique to read from websites to process their findings and record the information into the notes attached to each category symbol in Inspiration. Other students like a full view of the website and their mind map. They read from the website, minimize the window, and then maximize the mind map from the system tray to record their notes.

The Third Graders began developing their personal learning system last year while working on the ColonialQuest WebQuest. They used websites and books to record their notes in paper notebooks. This year, they use paper to record notes from books they read in the classroom. They will draw from the paper and digital notes to write their papers.

As they progress through Lower School into Middle School, the students will start using our Haiku learning management system, more Web 2.0 tools for creativity and collaboration, Noodle Tools for research, Google Apps for content creation and sharing, MindMeister for creativity, planning, and collaborating and many apps on the iPads that they will use to support their learning needs and styles best.

Personal Learning System- Graphically Represented

Mark and I have mentioned on the podcast and written about the value of students and teachers setting up their personal learning systems on their devices. The idea of a toolkit with websites, Web 2.0 tools, apps, widgets, etc., where one can easily access information, analyze it, create new knowledge, and communicate it is essential to help us be efficient and productive.

MindMeister put out their version of a personal learning environment, listing the tools with links. One could adapt their mind map for easy access to tools, use another interface like Symbaloo, or create their web page home screen with links to sites, etc. There are many interface choices to choose from.

Thanks to Nishant Mehta for the link.

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