Engaging Students with Concept Mapping Activities

1. My ideas for using Concept Mapping in my future classroom. What are 3-5 ideas or ways to use concept mapping that I have found?

This may be a potential useful technique for me to use in the field of science for students to learn the process of scientific inquiry and investigation. The reason I say this is because often times it is difficult to learn the scientific method. If students were able to identify a problem from past experiences, or prior knowledge, it would be easier to link new ideas to that knowledge. In doing so they learn the process.

It would also be useful to use because students that are visual learners could "see their thinking". They would be able to modify their thoughts easily and rapidly by using this software.

This would get students involved in the inquiry method, give them a basic outline of what they know and where to proceed from there. In this way it is a general view of their ideas that they can modify as their learning deepens.

This type of activity could be used as an attention grabber to start a lesson plan on any number of Scientific ideas. The teacher could ask if students know what the purpose of such a map is to start the class off.

The map could also be used to facilitate group work on a project of their choosing.


2.What impact might classroom use of Concept Mapping have upon student learning? Support statement with details.

I almost wish I had this when I was in graduate school! It organizes your thoughts and allows you to interact with them physically as you modify your schema about an issue. We are continually evaluating our data critically based upon the results of our experimentation. This software allows for modification based upon our research of the problem. In this way the Concept Map can grow and change with our changing thoughts about the research.

The concept map would also allow us to see how our research is connected to other scientists' research. Often there is unity in the oddest places we do not expect. This would allow for collaborations with others based upon how our projects morph. For example, two different groups of students may be working on two different problems at the surface, but when data is compiled they may find that their research is actually connected.




3. What criteria would I use to decide whether or not Concept Mapping activities would be used in lessons for my students?

I would have to evaluate what is being taught and if there is a better way (or not) to engage students in a project. For the idea of learning the scientific method, this may be a great way to get students thinking about the process. It may serve as an attention grabber at the beginning of a lesson? It would be good to start them thinking on a problem they may want to look into, but eventually they will have to design their own experiments and evaluate their results. These data could be incorporated into the map, but at this point in time the map may just function as a file of how their data is compiling to either accept or reject their initial hypothesis.