I Loved this offered by fellow OU Student.
Mind maps can be such twaddle.
For a few days I taught Tony Burzan in Secondary Schools; the best mind map wasn’t a mind map at all, it was a football field.
I was not invited to continue with my efforts to teach memory tricks and cheats after that my second only effort to occupy 40 Year 9s.
Another blog, another day …
An eventful seven hours or so. Despite the need for an essay plan, bullet points or an ordered list.
I tried to write a TMA from a mind map and got myself as ludicrously tied in knots as it is with unlinked threads and a failure to group the content; a Venn Diagram would have worked better. Which is a point as applicable to the software that creates these things, know your tools and choices and make them. Sometimes the old, simple ways work best. Essays and assignments, like a narrative, are linear.
My A’ level Geography teacher Mr D.Rhodes of the Newcastle R.G.S had the best approach.
An essay should look like a flower
- six petals = six ideas
- the stamen = the topic
- the stem = the introduction and conclusion.
A shorthand doodle at the end of an essay would often feature such a flower with ONE huge leaf until I got the picture. It must have worked; how else did I get into Oxford?
An essay plan or treatment, unlike a mind-map, requires effort, concentration and thought.
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