Blog #4- Mapping Students Minds

The focus of this weeks module was primarily on Inspiration, a program students use to create an outline and web that includes easy access to hyperlinks, notes, and pictures pertaining to a particular subject.

The article correlates directly with the Inspiration activity given this week in class; both require visual mapping of specific subjects. It allows students to neatly organize their thoughts from gathered data. This is especially useful when learning particularly difficult topics, such as science as in this case. Furthermore, these maps reveal direct relationships, inverse relationships, cause and effect, and factors between these two relationships, in this example dealing with the creek's health. Additionally this allows the students to see how they can relate the subjects with things in the real world, not just as an abstract subject or idea. These maps potentially help create a deeper knowledge for the subject matter, especially for visual learners. In this case technology helps "monitor" students learning where they can utilize the teamwork, the Internet, their teacher, and also, make revisions. This ultimately creates an all around better understanding of the subject matter being displayed. Perhaps this will promote students into becoming critical thinkers and store the concept and lesson into their long term memory, rather than just remembering it for that specific assignment or test!