Nawal's blog: Concept Maps

Concept mapping is a technique that developed by Prof. Joseph D. Novak at Cornell University in the 1960s and it use for representing knowledge in graphs. Knowledge graphs are networks of concepts, it consist of nodes and links.

Most of us could be confused between the mind map and the concept map, but there is a main different between them, the mind map has one concept but the concept map may have several. This comes down to the point that a mind map can be represented as a tree, while a concept map may need a network representation.

And there are four main types of concept maps. The most common is the Spider concept (central concept) figure [1] and its appropriate in the pre-writing stage when a person wants to brainstorm details about a specific topic. Hierarchy (chronological) figure [2] and it can help students to point out the main idea and details of text or a concept. Flowchart (liner fashion) figure [3] and Systems maps (inputs – outputs) figure [4]. Flowchart and Systems concept maps are great visuals for ordering sequence of events and presenting information.

figure[1]

figure[2]

figure [3]

figure [4]

The concept maps very useful to generate ideas like brain storming, to design a complex structure (long texts, hypermedia, large web sites, etc.),to communicate complex ideas ,to aid learning by explicitly integrating new and old knowledge and to assess understanding or diagnose misunderstanding.

To create a professional concept maps you have to follow five tips. First of all you have to gather your writing and drawing materials also you have to gather your research materials like books, class notes and related newspaper and magazine articles. Then select the appropriate concept map formats. After start making your first map, then revise the map and make any needed changes.

For me I use it with out I know its concept maps. But after the lecture , after I read the slides and search in the internet, I found it very useful technique that I can use it before any lesson, because it summarize all the lesson points and I can distributed in the end of my lesson . Also I plan to make a full work shop on the concept maps for the teachers or for students.

References:

[1] Creatng cincept maps.