Mapping Student Minds
Ariel Owen
This article discusses the use of mapping tools in the classroom. This author and educator uses mapping as a visual and tactile tool to enhance students’ understanding of data in a science class. The author, Owen, suggests that with this tool students not only gather and examine the data but they are directly involved in mapping the relationships and cause and effect of each piece of gathered information.
This tool enables students who are visual and tactile learners to see what their discoveries mean, how they are related and how they play a role in the overall picture or lesson. As a visual and tactic learner myself, I would have benefited from such a program in school. I feel that with this particular tool it is possible for students to have a hands on experience in their learning. Not only can students see their data using mapping but they can also use it to determine what evidence or data is less necessary in their study. The author reports that often his students will have an overly complicated map because they have a difficult time narrowing down the number of factors. This process ultimately helps students see how the factors that don’t apply are not useful and eliminate them from their diagram.
When can mapping be best applied to curriculum?
Mapping can best be used when there is measurable data or a cause and effect relationship in the data and lesson. When there are concrete results to be mapped students have the opportunity to enter in the findings and determine what those findings have in common and how they are interrelated.
What are some difficulties that students have when mapping?
As mentioned above, many students will “over-map” their findings. They will enter too many factors, many of which are unrelated or irrelevant, making the map more confusing. The author, Owen (2002), reports that this may be due to several reasons, whether it be, “pride in authorship, a fear of throwing away something important, or just an inability to let go of visible factors”. The author notes that this refining process is often a very difficult step for students.
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1 comment:
Typically causal relationships are described in text. This type of technology can provide another way to represent the relationships. Using both representations, students can have a better chance for in-depth understanding. And you're right, students can put too much text on a map.
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