Talkin' 'bout my cerebration.

I’ve recently re-discovered the beauty of working with concept maps.  This was brought on through some necessity in aiding students to understand complex health relationships.  It is through working with complex health relationships that students can progress from achieving a “C” to an “A” in my subject – Health Education.  I had toyed with concept maps a few years back, using Inspiration on the school network, but did not engage with them in a focussed manner.

At the “My Journey with Digital Pedagogy” presentation mentioned in a previous post, I wanted to represent the expanse of what I consider my Personal Learning Network / Personal Learning Environment.  The most effective way was to build a concept map.  Whilst building this map I began to think of the other benefits of using this in my teaching.  The ability to represent complex relationships provides students with another method of understanding the content, and a tangible resource to refer to when conducting analysis and evaluation.

The quest then began to locate accessible and user friendly software.  There is an abundance of concept mapping software available, from cloud software to local install and even applications for the iPhone / iPod Touch.  For me, the choice is CMaps.  The reasons;

1) local install to server allows collaborative work on concept maps.
2) local install to server allows discussion lists to be attached to concepts.
3) attachments can be embedded on the concept maps
4) concept maps can be programmed as a presentation.

Integration of concept maps into my teaching has provided students who learn visually an insight into my thinking.  I’ve found that the level of understanding of the learning has both deepened and broadened using concept maps.