A snapshot of key education topics is taken from the author's followers and plotted on a mind map. Interesting relationships and trends emerge.
What Are We All Talking About
Do you ever wonder where the music lies in all the noise? I wanted to know which topics educators were currently talking about. So I went to my burgeoning Twitter timeline on a specific, random day and time (Dec 8, 2011 at 4:07 pm). I then listed the ideas being discussed by my 'followed' colleagues which include teachers and teacher-librarians in the field, as well as notables like Joyce Valenza, Doug Johnson, Buffy Hamilton, Daniel Pink, Alfie Kohn, and Stephen Abram.
The conversation illustrated everything Twitter can be: inspiring or silly, banal or significant, timely or fleeting. But I needed to do more to make sense of the disparate tweets.
A Mind Map of the Conversation
At this year's Ontario Library Association SuperConference in Toronto, my colleague Scott McPhee and I will be presenting Integrating the Learning Commons. So in preparation for our talk, I have used the Mac App Store's application MindNode (Free) to work my Twitter list into a mind map.
The result was illuminating. The key topics (nodes) that emerged were the following in alphabetical order:
- Assessment
- Creativity
- Educational Reform
- Information Trends
- Internet for Learning
- Learning Design
- Literacies
- New Technologies
- Online Education
- Resourceful Schools
- School Libraries
- Social Networking
The Value of Mind Mapping
For me, the best part of mind mapping is forcing yourself to organize random information into useful knowledge. The map is organic, growing the relationships among the ideas. Each branch can be further cultivated by more reflection. Whole branches can also be related to another to see what was included or missing. I highly recommend MindNode (Free) as a simple tool for teaching and learning. MindNode Pro ($19.99 is even more powerful.
Distinguished from brainstorming, mind mapping requires summarizing, analysis, organization and synthesis. It also checks a tendency to over-emphasize one area of practice over another. For instance, the dedicated teacher may focus on her subject and forget the big picture. Likewise, the busy administrator may be reading up on assessment and national school reform, only to miss the global conversation about new educational technologies.
While my snapshot is of a particular moment in time from a limited source, I hope you find my exercise helpful.
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