OSCM3: Concept Mapping
Concept Mapping (d=0.62). The creation of graphic, hierarchical representations of course content. When students arrange new information, connecting it to what they know, they learn best.
Semantic maps offer a visual way of viewing “meaning-based connections between a word or phrase and a set of related words or concepts” (source: Reading Rockets).
Concept maps, diagrams, mindmaps, and semantic webs: these words evoke complex creations, calling to mind the spider webs. The right tools at hand mimic paper and pencil, tapping into our generative powers.
When you grasp a writing tool, you seize the chaotic energy of your mind. You seek to reflect the constellations of thought and map them. There are benefits to this thought cartography.
In the online compendium of research on evidence-based instructional strategies, those benefits are clear because all of these strategies have a thought mapping component which requires students to create a thought map or take notes.
Below is an edited description of each of these strategies from the Visible Learning MetaX database.
As I create a concept map, an outline, or take notes, I am full of questions that may include:
Should I build my understanding around this main idea?
Is this the main idea? What are the supporting or related concepts?
How do main idea and the supporting ideas connect to what I already know?
How can I best represent or arrange ideas to reflect what I know and what I am learning?
This self-interrogation is ever-present in all the strategies that involve diagramming and concept mapping. It is present in other strategies to integrate with prior knowledge (d=0.93), self-regulation (d=0.53), and others.
1- Select a Text
Instructions
- Read available selection.
- Write a short <280 word summary (use your Cornell Notes, if you want).
- Make a concept map of information
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts sea levels will rise almost half a meter by 2100. That water will displace several million people on coastlines around the world. Much of the water will come from the region around Pine Island Bay. Specifically, it will come from what’s been dubbed the “Doomsday Glacier”: Thwaites, one of our planet’s largest glaciers, which is roughly as extensive as Great Britain.
Glaciers form when snow is compacted into ice over hundreds of years. As the weight of new snow and ice presses down, the ice beneath starts to flow like a river. Thwaites is an outlet glacier, meaning it flows all the way to the ocean. There, its coastal edge stretches 120 kilometers in a dazzling white wall of ice that looms up to 40 meters above the surface of the ocean and reaches over 200 meters deep.
Thwaites and its neighbor Pine Island Glacier drain about one-third of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet—the ice sheet extending west from the natural dividing line of the Transantarctic Mountains. The two glaciers are breaking up into icebergs far more quickly than new ice can be created. Already they contribute five percent of annual sea level rise, or roughly 0.18 millimeters annually: the equivalent of dumping over 20 million Olympic-sized swimming pools into the ocean each year. And if Thwaites collapses, its shape and location mean the rest of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could go with it. All told, that’s enough water to raise sea levels by over three meters, redrawing coastlines and transforming the planet we know.
2- Explore Digital Tools
The quick list of tools available to educators and learners include the following:
Google Drawings: This is a core component of Google Workspace. Learners can combine hierarchical maps and outlines in one document. Although it may mean more work, you can do quite a bit within the limits of Drawings. An added benefit? Use it with Google Classroom. Start drawing online at drawings.google.com.
Diagrams.net: Saves to Google Workspace. This is one of my favorite, free tools for creating concept maps, as well as diagrams. Get started with Diagrams.net via app.diagrams.net.
yED Live: This easy-to-use diagramming and mapping tool is available as free, open source. You can run a program on your Windows computer or access it via a web browser. It is incredibly versatile and saves to Google Drive. yEd Live makes it a simple matter to share your creations with others.
YEd LIVE and ChatGPT: Get AI to Make Your Map
yED Live has made it easy to take short summaries of 280 words or less, then make a concept map out of them using ChatGPT.
yEd Live, the popular diagram editor, has recently integrated ChatGPT, as an intelligent assistant that lets you generate diagrams from a simple text description. With this new feature, users can easily create visualizations for any topic that comes to their mind. (source)
Paste in the selection (200 or so words) to be turned into a concept map into yEd LIVE.
yEd LIVE will use ChatGPT to summarize and create the map.
3- Share Your Creation
You will need to share your creation via this Padlet . Follow these instructions:
Snap a picture or save your map
Attach it to a post on Padlet