A visual organization and representation of knowledge that shows concepts, ideas and relationship among them is concept mapping. One creates a concept map on a board by writing key words and relates them by drawing arrows. These arrows explain how the concepts are related to each other. A short explanation can also be added in a dialogue box by the arrow.
The concept maps can be used as an in-class pre-assessment. The students can be asked to make a concept map before a topic is discussed in the class. Then while the discussion happens in the class, one can modify the maps to reflect what they have understood of the topic. Thus the overall learning of a concept becomes easy. The student is involved in the learning rather than being only a listener.
Concept mapping can be turned into a small group activity to solve a problem or study a case. They can be divided into groups where each group can create a concept map to analyze and synthesize their learned information. The groups can then present their conclusions to their class using the map.
Teachers can also create a concept map of the material before they teach a class. They can use it to play a ‘fun while you learn game’ where the teachers will hide some of the concepts and labels from the class and then have them fill in the blank spots and label the relationships. The students can grasp the material in a better way.
Concept map maker helps the students see relationships between ideas, concepts, or authors in a better way as they utilize the full range of the left and right hemispheres of their brain. The ideas are clarified and more structured thus aiding in developing higher-level thinking skills.
