Week 6 - Concept Mapping and Collaboration

Use in the Classroom

• Lesson Objective: the will be able to analyze content from the textbook and create a concept map answering the question "Why has global trade increased since the middle of the 1900s?"

Students will read a section of our economics textbook individually and take reading notes.  I will then group students up into groups of 4-5 people to create a concept map as a group.  Students will be encouraged to answer the above question in the form of a concept map using the information from the textbook.  The challenge will be to take the ideas and view of different group members and meld them together into a single concept map.  Through discussion and debate students will develop a stronger grasp of the content and will develop important analytical and argumentative skills.  The process of creating a concept map will also help students develop the ability to link together individual pieces of information into a larger, linked concept.

Technology opens new doors for meaningful collaboration in the classroom.  I can have students collaborate on research papers to give feedback on first and second drafts.  I can use google slides to have students collaborate on a class jigsaw presentation.  The discussion feature on google classroom allows me to give students the opportunity to discuss controversial or challenging topics - it provides students with the time and safe space to interact with one another and developing their opinions and perspectives on a variety of topics and issues.

Creating a culture of collaboration in a classroom takes intentionality on the part of the teacher.  I need to take the time to model appropriate collaborative behaviors to students - many of them do not know what good collaboration looks like.  I also need to dedicate time to team-building activities.  In order for students to feel completely comfortable sharing ideas and collaborating we need to have a classroom culture built on respect and the idea that all people have something of value to add to the discussion/project/activity.

Here is my sample project.

Application

This week's project illustrates several of the multimedia design principles.

• The Coherence Principle - a concept map takes the key ideas and places them in relation to one another.  Extraneous information is removed and only the essential content is presented to students.
• The Spatial Contiguity Principle - people learn best when related content is presented in close physical proximity to each other.  A concept map visually represents the relationships between important content.
• Segmenting  Principle - a concept map breaks a lesson into learner-paced parts.  Somebody who views a concept map processes the information in bite size pieces and analyzes one relationship at a time.  A student who is creating a concept map must break the information down into individual pieces in order to create a concept map.

Reflection

I played around with the coggle software, but ultimately struggled with using it to create my concept map.  As a google user I didn't find coggle to be as intuitive.  Ultimately I gave up and defaulted to using google drawing to create my concept map.

I thought about using Prezi.  I have never used prezi, but based on presentations I have seen it seems like it could be a good option for creating a concept map that an audience could view in a flexible and explorative way.

Throughout this class I have felt like I have struggled through each new project - most of the ideas and tools have been new and my ability to use them has been rudimentary at best.  I have appreciated being exposed to a variety of different multimedia tools, but I think it would take additional practice (and maybe PD training) to master the tools in a way that I could effectively and efficiently use them in the classroom.