Mindmap and Obama's Plan

The Presidential Election in November should be one of the most important event in America. There are large amounts of convention speeches, television ads, and political talk shows being broadcasted on TV everyday. Last month, my husband and I went to Pricechopper, we even met an American friend who gave us a Barack Obama for President Logo Lapel and hoped us support Obama. Although I’m not American, I’m interested in this presidential election. Today, when I was surfing online, I found an interesting article, named "Obama’s Plan For America: A Mindmap of His New Book". Perhaps the mind map in this essay can help us understand what Obama government will do if elected and their plans for America.

http://mindmapblog.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/obamas-plan-for-america-a-mindmap-of-his-new-book/

A Video about Mind Mapping

In recent days, I read some articles about Mind Mapping. Those articles gave me a general idea about what is Mind Mapping and the fields in which it can be used. However, frankly speaking, I am still not so clear how to use this tool in teaching, learning, business and some other areas in my life time. This morning, I sat in front of my laptop, and considered how to make good use of our rich online resources. I visited YouTube and got a satisfied answer there.

This video illustrates many of the core benefits of Mind Mapping. It helps me understand Mind Mapping in depth and the impact it can have on our personal and professional life. Please take a look and share with me what you learn from it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQj7pdwaggg

Activities in which Mind Map Can Be Used

• Note-taking and reporting. Recall
• Brainstorm. Improve creativity. Capture ideas.
• Presentation.
• Planning.
• Analyze and solve complex problems.
• Team building.
• Collapse or expand topics to see more or to see less detail.
• Support group communication processes.

What is "mind map"?

A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision decision, and writing.

The elements of a given mind map are arranged intuitively according to the importance of the concepts, and are classified into groupings, branches, or areas, with the goal of representing semantic or other connections between portions of information. Mind maps may also aid recall of existing memories.

By presenting ideas in a radial, graphical, non-linear manner, mind maps encourage an unorthodox brainstorming approach that can generate ideas without regard for a more formal, hierarchical organization system.

Though more freewheeling and individualized, mind maps are similar to more rigidly-structured semantic networks or cognitive maps.

Origin of Mind Mapping

Radial drawings have already been used for centuries to analyze all kinds of problems. An early example is the graphical representation of the categories of Aristotle by Neoplationist thinker Poephyry in the 3rd century. Tony Buzan, a British psychologist and a business creativity guru, was seeking a visual and faster way of outlining ideas on paper to support learning and memorizing. He made the modern Mind Map popular in the 60s.

Welcome to my blog

Wow, ok, huge welcome to my blog!!

My name is Yan Suo, from China. I’m the first year graduate student majoring in IDD&E. I’m excited to continue my learning after five years working period.

My favorite topic is Sport and Economy. If you have the same interests as me, we can have a deep and detailed discussion face to face, or through E-mail, because this blog will be used as an academic blog, concentrating on Instructional design, development and evaluation.

If you would like to know more about me, you can visit my hotmail space; however, it’s a Chinese blog, knowing Chinese and having Chinese system on your computer are prerequisites for you to visit and understand it. Of course, we have another way to be familiar with each other —let’s talk in the classroom, talk about our learning in class and talk about our life and interests after class.

I hope this blog will become a good tool for us on our learning!