International School Library Month (ISLM) is celebrated every year in October. It first began as simply International School Library Day in 1999, but in 2008 it was decided to make it an entire month to honour the fantastic work of school libraries all over the world and their contribution to student achievement and development.
This year, our theme is Your School Library: Mind-Map Central. Mind-mapping is a way of note taking -in a visual form that gives you an overview of a topic and its complex information. This lets you understand more easily, create new ideas and build connections. It can also be a really cool way to brainstorm and organise ideas for projects, research and essays.
Akinoglu and Yasar, 2007 and Abi-El-Mona et al., 2008 showed that students who use mind mapping show improved creativity, organisation, productivity, and memory for mastering complicated ideas!
Creating a mind map is simple too... you can just use a whiteboard or sheet of drawing paper & coloured markers, or if you prefer, there are many software options from which to choose. Here are 5 great free choices –
- Examtime
- Xmind
- Coggle
- Freemind
- CubeCreator and our school library collection is also a brilliant starting point for any mind mapping exercise!
References
Abi-El-Mona, I, (2008). The Influence of Mind Mapping on Eighth Graders’ Science Achievement. School Science and Mathematics, 180, 298-312.
Akinoglu, O. & Yasar, Z. (2007). The effects of note taking in science education through the mind mapping technique on students’ attitudes, academic achievement and concept learning. Journal of Baltic Science Education, 6 (3), 34-43.
