Session+10

10.1 Opener
I often present students with concept maps to show them how concepts are connected. Ideally, I would have students create their own concept maps. It has been something I have wanted to incorporate into my curriculum for a long time, but hesitated because it takes students a while to get the hang of how to meaningfully link concepts. Next year, I intend to start off by giving students concept maps and then gradually take away structures until students are making their own. Concept maps are important to the 21st century classroom because they force students to make connections, showing them that concepts do not exist in isolation. Concept maps put the focus on the big picture, rather than minute details.

10.2 Bubbl.us
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What went well and what was challenging? I enjoyed creating the bubble map. It was a nice way to synthesize all of the strategies we have learned in this course. If I had the time to redo the bubble map, I would make each bubble a single concept and use links to explain how concepts are related, rather than writing sentences and phrases within the bubbles. I didn't realize at first that the links could be labeled.

How might you use this in your classroom? I would use this tool similarly in my classroom. I would likely use it as a review at the end of a unit. I would give students a list of key terms to include as bubbles in their concept map, and then hold them responsible for determining how the terms are connected by labeling their linkages. I would scaffold this assignment at the beginning of the year by creating my own concept maps, then gradually excluding pieces of information until students are able to create their own from scratch.

10.3 Mindomo
Task: Using a mind-map as a planning tool, outline ideas you have for your lesson. Include links to images, readings, documents, videos etc that you may want to include.

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Sidenote: I MUCH preferred Bubbl.us to Mindomo. I didn't like the Mindomo interface- I found it clunky. I lost two versions of my Mindomo map before finally embedding this one! It kept telling me it saved automatically, but apparently not.

[|mindomo.com] help: Creating your first mind-map: [] Saving your map: [] Formatting and styling your mind-map: [] Working with topics: [] Sharing your map: []