Concept/mind mapping

Use in the classroom:

With students in 7th grade through 12th grade in one classroom and each students working on individualized classes, at an individualized pace, collaboration is not something that is usually done in our setting. But one thing that we did as a class on the very first day of school was to create our classroom rules and expectations together. We created it in an outline form but after working with coggle.it I think I would have my students work together as a class to create the rules for the classroom using coogle.it. Students would work together as a class, talking and discussing what they believe would be some good "school rules" to have at our little alternative setting. They would work together to create something that would be used in the classroom throughout the year. Using coggle.it they could even take pictures depicting the rules and add them to their concept map and/or create a video depicting the rules and consequences for not following those rules. (They would enjoy this because it would allow them to break the rules on purpose (within reason) and not get into trouble :) )

Application:

The design principles from week one that align with this type of lesson would be the signaling principle, spatial contiguity and the personalization principle. Coggle.it would help the students organize what they believe are the most important points and rules for the classroom. Adding visual images of the students depicting the rules next to the written words would help students to spatially and visually connect the rules and their behaviors. Since the rules would be written by the students they will be written in a conversational style that the students are sure to understand.

Reflection:

I really enjoyed making this concept map this week. I know this is a little different than the typical concept map and/or how it would be used to help collaboration between students, but it fit with my current classroom and students that I service. I thought it was fun and pretty easy to use. For my links I included the outline that we made as a class at the beginning of the year, as well as the high school's student handbook. I didn't really have a video to put in it and I didn't really want to just add a random video because this is all about our school, so I added a video that some of our high school students made at the school a couple of years ago. I was thinking that I could have my students create some type of video to go along with their concept map and let them work together and have fun. I was thinking that I would even have all of the students put the concept map that they create as their background on the desktop of their computers, that way they always have the classroom rules right in front of them!