Benefits of Concepts Maps for students
- Provide students with nonlinear visual ways to understand, produce, and represent knowledge.
- Help develop higher-order thinking skills including analytical skills.
- Facilitate the recall and processing of information.
- Help students externalize their knowledge and show their understanding.
- Make explicit structural forms of knowledge and relationships between concepts and therefore enhance students comprehension.
- Concept maps respond to the needs of different learning styles.
- They engage students in meaningful learning activities.
- They are effective organizational tools students can use to organize their knowledge.
- Visual representations of knowledge is proved to both stimulate and increase brain activity (Marzono, 1998, cited in Birbili, 2006).
- Boost social interaction, communication and collaborative team work.
- They can be used in different content areas and with students from different grades.
What is the purpose of a concept map?
- Highlight the similarities and/or differences between concepts.
- Break down and show the different components of a concept or a complex idea.
- Showcase the procedural steps involved in the development of a concept, event…etc.
- Brainstorm ideas on a particular topic.
- Gather feedback from your audience/students.
- Use concept maps in review activities or as exit tickets.
How do you create a concept map?
1. MindMeister
2. Miro
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Image credit: miro.com |
3. Lucidspark
4. MindMup
5. Mindomo
6. Coggle
7. Bubbl.us
8. Google Drawings
2- The effect of concept mapping on students’ learning achievements and interests (research paper by Chei-Chang Chiou).
3- Concept maps as a tool for meaningful learning and teaching in chemistry education (research paper by Mustafa KILIÇ and Murset ÇAKMAK).
4- Why concepts, why meaningful learning, why collaborative activities and why concept maps? (research paper by Marco Moreira).
5- Concept maps (Reading Rockets).
6- Mapping Knowledge: Concept Maps in Early Childhood Education (research paper by Maria Birbili)
7- Concept maps: Are they good for assessment? (Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching)
9- Concept maps, a must for the modern teaching-learning progress (research paper by Ionana Stoica, Silvia Morary and Cristina Miron)
10- Ten Good Online Tools for Creating Mind Maps (Free Technology for Teachers)
11- Mind Mapping and Brainstorming Apps and Websites (Common Sense Education)