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Hi - We have been using mind mapping at Dixons CTC for several years. We started with Inspiration, which is still used, particularly by younger students, but now also have MindManager from Mindjet.com. It is a very sophisticated tool, but the students love it. It allows more text on screen than Inspiration and a greater degree of export possibilities. However, regardless of the tool, the concept of mapping is hugely beneficial in terms of developing thinking and organisational skills. We had a considerable grant from the Learning Skills Development Agency last year to do some action research with AVCE students specifically to improve their IL skills, and, along with developing effective questioning skills, mindmapping played a major role in what we did. If anyone would like to know more about the project, please contact me (though I will be away from tomorrow to March 16th). Regards, Lynn Barrett ----- Original Message ----- From: S.Webber To: [log in to unmask] Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 6:28 PM Subject: Mindmaps again Hi - interesting to hear about all this mindmapping. Bill Johnston and I did a half-day seminar on "Mindmapping: developing creativity and information literacy" for SINTO in 2004. I thought I'd done a blog entry, but seems I never got round to it. I talked about using it when teaching information literacy (see below). Bill introduced the concept, its use in different contexts, and talked about how he uses it in a Creativity class he runs as part of Strathclyde Business School's entrepreneurship programme. Delegates created their own group mindmaps around concepts like "creative work" and "barriers to creativity". I gave a paper, about using mindmapping in my Information Literacy class, at the Online conference in Dec 2002 called "Mapping a path to the empowered searcher" and you can download it from http://dis.shef.ac.uk/sheila/sw-mindmap-2002.pdf The students have to do mindmaps as part of an individual and a group search exercise (both not assessed), and for their coursework they get marks for before and after mindmaps of an individual search topic they have to do (they go into pairs and set each other search topics - mostly not academic ones. The main part of the courseworks asks them to describe and reflect on their development in the "7 pillars" of information literacy, with special reference to this particular search). They also have a compulsory exam question where they have to do a mindmap. There is also the feature in Library and Information Update which Bill and I contributed short pieces to, and there are longer items by Adrian Dale and Sheila O'Flynn. Dale, A et al. (2003) "Information: it's all in the mind." Library and information update, 2 (4). http://www.cilip.org.uk/publications/updatemagazine/archive/archive 2003/april/update0304b.htm Sheila --------------------- Sheila Webber, Lecturer, Department of Information Studies, University of Sheffield, Regent Court, 211 Portobello Street, Sheffield S1 4DP, UK. Email [log in to unmask] Tel. (0044) 0114 222 2641 Fax 0114 278 0300 The Information Literacy Weblog: http://ciquest.shef.ac.uk/infolit/