Five ways to use the Mind Map

What’s the purpose of the Mind Map app? Read on for five creative ways teachers can use this tool.

As a reminder, the Mind Map is an educational tool that lets you arrange ideas and concepts in a structured way so the information is easier to understand and memorize. The center of the map includes a single circle, with a secondary ring of circles arranged around the middle. Other circles can be attached as needed. The result is a clear method for ranking and organizing information.

A Mind Map can be used in a variety of ways, whether to take notes, organize a project, summarize a concept, brainstorm, assess knowledge, and more. Here are five unique ideas submitted by teachers.

1 Break down a concept

The most obvious way to use a Mind Map is to break an idea down into its most salient points so students can memorize it more easily. If we consider the basic example of the different states of water, we could add three circles representing the three states—liquid, solid, and gas.

2 Summarize a textbook chapter

The idea is to pull out the most important information from the chapter to give a clear and simplified overview of the key takeaways. A chapter on WWII could be organized by theme, such as “Origins of the conflict,” “Stakeholders,” “Key dates”, “Conclusion,” etc.

3 Organize all the resources for a specific topic

With the virtual learning environment’s Mind Map, you can create links to external resources or content created within the other apps. For example, you can create a circle with all the links for your class, a circle that lists all the supporting videos and documents students should watch, and another circle with exercises.

4 Create a collaborative worksheet

The Mind Map has a number of collaborative applications. In language classes, for example, you can ask students in your class to fill out the secondary ring of circles with words that relate back to the main word to create a full lexicon.

5 Coordinate a project

You can also list all the steps for a project in a Mind Map. When planning a field trip, for example, you could create one circle for outing ideas, another for administrative questions (parent permission slips, cost, etc.), and another to keep track of the chaperon list.