Using Mind Mapping to Foster Divergent Thinking
The biggest challenge facing our educational system today is the traditional learning model that leads our children to think irrationally. Thankfully, mind mapping has emerged as an incredible tool that gives students the skills they need to think creatively and logically.
The process of mind mapping inherently encourages multilateral thinking, rather than the linear type of reasoning that is prevalent in the current educational system. Here I will cover some of the benefits of mind mapping, as well as instances where educators could incorporate Inspiration Maps into their lessons to make them more interesting and engaging to students.
The Mind Mapping Strategy
Mind mapping is an innovative medium used for brainstorming ideas, organizing information, thinking analytically, and creating new things. It’s simply a way to systematically think of something and then display that information with a tool—a tool that can be used for answering questions and providing solutions to problems.
Mind mapping is also useful for organizing your thoughts in a graphical sense that gives you the freedom to interlink ideas and concepts while exploring new possibilities. The only problem is that people often utilize mind mapping incorrectly, choosing to clutter their thinking process with tons of different ideas lacking an established order or natural flow. Effective mind mapping is the combination of divergent and convergent brainstorming complemented by a visual aid.
Divergent and Convergent Thinking
The first part of an efficient mind mapping strategy is divergent thinking. This is when you free yourself to come up with new ideas, topics, subtopics, and other relevant information you want to review or organize.
Allow your mind to explore any information, regardless of whether or not it is relevant to the main subject. With divergent thinking, you do not draw any significant relationships or patterns between ideas. You simply garner as much information as possible without paying any attention to the connections.
The second component to an effective mind mapping strategy is convergent thinking. This plays the most vital role of the two. Without convergent thinking, you are left without focus or direction. Here’s where you have to organize your thoughts into something logical, use the tool to find practical solutions and then draw conclusions. It’s seeing the big picture, figuring out how it all relates and works together. Convergent thinking is the process of sorting through information and filtering out anything that is extraneous to your goal.
Mind Mapping as a Tool
Organizing information in your head is hard. It requires extensive amounts of memory and the internal visual perception to find relevant patterns and relationships between your thoughts. Mind maps are tools that allow you to actually visualize these ideas and create resources that you can reference when analyzing information. These maps can be drawn up on paper or digitally with the proper software.
The biggest problem with this concept in educational settings is that students immediately start with convergent thinking to draw their mind maps. This is understandable, but it limits the mind and quickly uses up ideas. Start your mind map with way too much information. Think outside the box. Include everything and anything that you find useful. The true process of mind mapping is sorting through this information and picking out what is most important to remember or associate with your mind map.
Here’s an example template from Inspiration Maps that uses the Six Kingdoms of Biology as its subject.
Notice how the chart is broken down into smaller and more specific subcategories that can all relate back to the main idea. This is a visual representation of an efficient flow of ideas that is useful for drawing conclusions and remembering important facts. It’s how the brain works naturally. You think of something and then that thought is followed by another and another until the cycle ends at a completely different subject.
For example, perhaps you started thinking about the six kingdoms of biology. One of the kingdoms is Animalia, which includes the biological family of canidae, or canines. Next you’ll be thinking about whether or not you’ve fed your dog yet. That’s the natural flow of ideas. Starting with a generic topic and working your way down is the divergent process–while convergent thinking is figuring out that the idea of feeding your dog isn’t actually relevant to the six kingdoms of biology at all.
Mind mapping allows you to actually see this process as it goes on in your head. It helps you to stay on task and naturally progress through ideas quickly and easily, allowing you to learn new concepts and draw insightful relationships between them.
How to Use Inspiration Maps for Mind Mapping
Inspiration Maps for the iPad is a great tool that allows you to draw up mind maps easily and effectively. The best part is, since it’s all digital you can add or delete as much information as you like at any time. This gives you the freedom to think divergently and convergently without any limitations on formatting or editing.
You start by selecting the two main components of your mind map: the title and the idea you are trying to expand upon.
Next you can begin adding your ideas surrounding the topic. Remember, at first you want to add as much information as possible. With Inspiration Maps you can just touch and drag a new thought bubble to type in a new idea or fact for your mind map. This copies the sensation that you’d get working with pen and paper, giving the user a more ergonomic experience. It’s simple and fast, allowing your mind to flow as naturally as it should.
Once you’re finished coming up with all of your ideas, then (and only then) is it time to start organizing your mind map. With Inspiration Maps you can add connections between ideas and stem them back to broader subjects or thoughts. You can also delete ideas or edit them to add additional information or keywords. Other elements are easily customizable, such as color patterns and the overall flow of ideas from front to back, right to left, or center to outer rim. Inspiration Maps gives you the perfect medium for mind mapping to foster divergent thinking.
Using mind mapping and divergent thinking, the modern student will be equipped to actively think “outside of the box.” These techniques will prepare students to approach complex real-world challenges with confidence, and also give them the ability to model their challenges and thought processes in a way that makes sense to them. On top of all this, the process is fun and rewarding. What are you waiting for? A world of inspiration awaits!
Vincent Clarke is a former collegiate tutor and currently manages outreach for USB Memory Direct, working with both K-12 schools and universities to get them the tools their students need to succeed in the digital age.
Love it love it. Linking this to divergent and convergent thinking is spot on. I can imagine a classroom where students and teachers collaborate to map a concept, and even find new applications for it and make new discoveries together, just by using mind maps. I started a little blog, mindmappingfun.com, to try and spread the word as well, in my own small way. I look forward to a better education system and a brighter future.
Mind maps can be really helpful when brainstorming or learning.
It makes it clear. I love to diferse my seed idea to multiple topics and them analyze each one.
I use that technique for blogging and I love it!