Organizing Thoughts & Ideas (week 3)

I am usually a very organized and “on top of it” person. Thing are marked, labeled and assigned a home. When things are “out of place”, it eeks me to the point that I have to stop and put things back. The only place allowed to be slightly cluttered is my desk. But that clutter only lasts for a short time, such as 3 days. By each Friday, my desk is cleaned, cleared and organized. It is just how my mind works. Even when the physical labels are not on the drawer or cabinet, as my best friend puts it, there are mental labels in my mind. I teach this way too. Organization is a very big part of my teaching as well as a part of science.

I frequently use concept mapping and mind maps to help my kids sort out the cluster of ideas that they have compiled from a unit, chapter or conversation. Cognitively I feel that mind maps help students with logical order and categorizing their thoughts. Similarly to how we teach them to use their binder and planners to track work, organize papers and keep track of their assignments. With today’s technology, my team is striving to use OneNote and Inspiration to help teach our students how to organize their notes and sort ideas.
OneNote works similar to a 3-Ring binder but allows for not only the obvious use of computer but also make it easy to insert new notes or reorganize the points. With traditional paper notes, when you want to add something new or expand an idea you need to have allocated space in advance. With OneNote, you can just pop up to the space your old notes are and simply add the additional thoughts. When you need to “reorder” or sort though random ideas, it is a simple click and drag to the right location. Another added bonus is that OneNote also instantly saves their work, like a classic notebook once you write it down it is there.

The program Inspiration is one of my favorite technology mind map programs. Although I do use Smart Notebook to provide my students with predesigned graphic organizers and other mind maps, I often instruct them to use Inspiration to create their own from scratch. All too often my students are familiar with the most common bubble maps, vinn diagrams and pro-con charts. What they are still learning to do it start with a simple concept, thought or idea and build a concept map from scratch. I think cognitively they could do it if they could let go of their concern for “doing it wrong”. I am working on this.