Russell Stannard opens his mind to mapping.
Webwatcher is going to take a small turn this month. Instead of recommending websites to use in your teaching, I want to focus on a product you can download from the internet which I have found very useful in my classes.
www.matchware.net/en/default.html
Among the products that Matchware produce is something called Open Mind. This product, in its simplest form, is a tool that allows you to create a mindmap, starting with a central idea and then branching off and developing themes from that main idea. The branches can be open or closed and links can be made across branches. But what makes it much more powerful than using the board or a piece of paper is that you can add video, text, sound files and pictures to your mindmap and in this way it becomes visually more interesting, much more engaging and learner-friendly, and it provides much more information. The mindmaps you create can be saved and used again another time or with another class, and they can even be transferred straight into a PowerPoint presentation. Mindmaps are great for brainstorming vocabulary, getting together ideas for essays and discussions, and for encouraging students to collaborate and work in groups.
Tips and ideas
- You can download a copy of Open Mind and use it in your class for free. Although you are limited to the number of branches you can use and you are not given the massive collection of clip art that is provided with the full package, you can still use it very effectively in class and at least get an idea of what it is capable of doing.
- Learning to use keyboard short cuts is really helpful as it enables you to make mindmaps really quickly. Most of the time you can right-click and the important options are immediately available to you. It is worth quickly showing the class what options they have if they right-click. Write up a list of keyboard shortcuts and the students will quickly become proficient.
- Experiment with using the different templates. You don’t have to start with a central idea; you can use a great variety of structures, including a hierarchical one as shown on page 61.
- In my institution, we downloaded the software onto several computers and used it to get the students to work together to create mindmaps for their essay questions. This generally worked well, though it is best if you choose one person in each group to create the mindmap.
- It is a good idea to get the students to download a free copy of Open Mind onto their personal computers so that they can make their own mindmaps at home.
- If you are lucky enough to have access to computers in your classroom or a computer suite, then download the mindmapping software onto the computers and get groups of students to produce mindmaps in the class. It is surprising how much more seriously they take the whole process when what they produce comes out on a computer screen and looks really professional. It takes little time to teach them how to add branches, text, pictures, videos, etc. Afterwards, get a student from each of the groups to present their mindmap to the rest of the class.
- Use it yourself to help you with your preparation. You can get your ideas together in a mindmap and then export the lot to PowerPoint at the touch of a button.
Practical uses
1. Improving English
I produced a mindmap in advance of the lesson about all the things that students could do to improve their English outside of the class. I then printed it out and gave it to the students at the beginning of my EAP course.
2. Transport
At the beginning of a lesson on transport, I began by getting the students to brainstorm vocabulary for transport. Together we created a mindmap. The branches were based on grammatical areas like nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. We added a few pictures to certain branches and used the special tools to make links from one branch to another. After the class, I printed the completed mindmap and gave copies to the students in the next lesson.
3. The Chinese economy
In an English for Academic Studies lesson, I started by getting the students to brainstorm the question ‘What impact has the growth in the Chinese economy had on the rest of the world?’ The mindmap we created is shown on page 60. One of the students controlled the computer and used Open Mind to produce the mindmap while the rest of the class came up with ideas. We then printed out their mindmap so that each student had a copy to help them with their homework, which was to write an essay on the topic.
Open Mind is a great tool and ideal for language teaching. It only takes about five minutes to learn how to use it, which is great for busy teachers. The impact on essay planning, brainstorming, getting ideas together for discussions and for your pre-class preparation is phenomenal. I ended up buying the package.
Russell Stannard is a senior lecturer in ICT and course leader for MSc Multimedia at the University of Westminster, UK. He has an extensive publishing background in ELT and is currently working with BBC Worldwide on various CD-ROMs, and with Macmillan Hong Kong on a primary course. He also teaches English and Spanish at Sutton Adult Education College, UK.
This article first appeared in English Teaching Professional, Issue 45, 2006
