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What
are Concept Maps?
A
concept map is a special form of a web diagram for exploring knowledge
and gathering and sharing information. Concept mapping is the strategy
employed to develop a concept map. A concept map consists of nodes
or cells that contain a concept, item or question and links. The
links are labeled and denote direction with an arrow symbol. The
labeled links explain the relationship between the nodes. The arrow
describes the direction of the relationship and reads like a sentence.
What
is its purpose?
Concepts
maps can be used to:
- Develop
an understanding of a body of knowledge.
- Explore
new information and relationships.
- Access
prior knowledge.
- Gather
new knowledge and information.
- Share
knowledge and information generated.
- Design
structures or processes such as written documents, constructions,
web sites, web search, multimedia presentations.
- Problem
solve options.
How
can I do it?
- Select
- Focus
on a theme and then identify related key words or phrases.
- Rank
- Rank
the concepts (key words) from the most abstract and inclusive
to the most concrete and specific.
- Cluster
- Cluster
concepts that function at similar level of abstraction and
those that interrelate closely.
- Arrange
- Arrange
concepts in to a diagrammatic representation.
- Link
and add proposition
- Link
concepts with linking lines and label each line with a proposition.
Critical
Questions:
- What
is the central word, concept, research question or problem around
which to build the map?
- What
are the concepts, items, descriptive words or telling questions
that you can associate with the concept, topic, research question
or problem?
Suggestions:
- Use
a top down approach, working from general to specific or use a
free association approach by brainstorming nodes and then develop
links and relationships.
- Use
different colors and shapes for nodes & links to identify
different types of information.
- Use
different colored nodes to identify prior and new information.
- Use
a cloud node to identify a question.
- Gather
information to a question in the question node.
Teacher
Resources
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