Have you heard about mental maps? Do you know what it's about? To help you boost your studies and use this mechanism that is so important for teaching, Escola Educação will explain what it is and how to make a mind map.
Mental map is the name given to a kind of diagram created by the Englishman Tony Buzan in the late 1960s. They constitute representations of knowledge, expressed in pictures, drawings and even keywords, built from an initial concept.
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Mind maps can be made on paper, by hand or with the help of computer resources, or even through your cell phone. In them, there can be photos, drawings, lines and various colors.
Why Create Mind Maps?
It is worth mentioning that the creation of mind maps works two areas of the brain - the rational side and the creative side. Therefore, they develop memory and learning through the visual representation of educational content.
In addition, mind maps improve productivity when organizing and producing content, following a flow of ideas that comes from the brain.
The structuring of the mental map also becomes an efficient filter for studies and long-term memorization.
How to make mind maps?
There is no magic formula or recipe for how to make a mind map, but we can give you some tips on how to guide the process. First of all, remember that it must be well-planned, with the use of balloons, colors, shapes and arrows.
The first thing you should keep in mind is which method will be used when producing the mind map: will it be on blank paper or in a program? From this, separate the necessary materials to start, some of them being: colored pencils, pen, pencil, eraser, ruler, sticky notes and their references.
If you're going to produce on paper, don't get caught up in the idea that you need to be creative or even an artist. What is important is for the brain to understand the order of the data and the meaning of those words or drawings, preferably arranged horizontally.
After that, establish a central idea and create the branches, with secondary ideas and so on. Avoid using long sentences and opt for keywords and images.
Take advantage of the space to highlight historical contexts, causes, consequences, details, among other information that symbolize the programmatic content.
Oh! Don't forget to use the colors in mind maps. And, if necessary, edit as many times as you want, because the objective here is unique — learning.
Tools for creating mind maps
The use of tools and specific software facilitated the process of creating mental maps. This happens because in programs it is possible to include, exclude and organize information more freely.
Also, other resources that these platforms allow are the collaboration of other people and the creation of hyperlinks, with other mental maps and contents from your computer and the internet. That is, you can even link to the contents here from Escola Educação.
Check the list below with 8Specialized programs for creating mind maps:
- canvas (Free and online version)
- Coggle (Free and online version)
- free mind (Free version for Windows, MAC OS and Linux)
- Free Plane (Free version for Windows, MAC OS and Linux)
- MindManager (Paid version Windows and MAC OS)
- Mind Meister (Free and paid version, online)
- Mind Node (Free version for MAC OS, iPad and iPhone)
- XMind (Free and paid version for Windows, MAC OS and Linux)
Read too: 14 best websites and apps to create mind maps
