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MirandaNet Fellowship Casestudy
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Proposal: Mobility of Mind and the Migrating Text
Concept Mapping and Multimediality
Wilma Clark
Year of posting: 2006
Abstract:
The case study looks at the use of mindmapping to enhance learning in ICT at AS Level. The study involves a group of Year 10 students (18 girls) who are working on an accelerated learning program.
The case study has two key aims:
(1) to establish whether - and if so, how - mindmapping software can usefully contribute to learning and, in particular, whether collaborative linking significantly improves thinking.
(2) to identify student desires (what they want the software to do) and ways of achieving greater dynamicity or interactivity in digital mindmapping by combining different types of software.
(Editor adds: Wilma had an image here, and some of the text below had hypertext links, but the links no longer work and have been taken out.)
Example of student-generated collaborative mindmap (now web-based and dynamic - requires Java 1.4 - click on nodes to expand) produced during an initial whole class discussion (you need to be logged in to view this section) with students on the topic of "What is brainstorming?" (the map was produced as we talked, using the Interactive Whiteboard.
Keywords:
mindmap multimediality concept-map brainstorm learning digital media multimodality technology collaboration
Study
Abstract
Mobility of Mind and the Migrating Text
This case study looks at the development of thinking skills and collaborative knowledge building using digital mindmapping software. The theoretical underpinning for the case study is tied into (1) social constructivism, (2) activity theory and (3) cultural semiotics. The study seeks to explore the flexibility of notions of boundary in meaning making and, in particular the multimodal nature of digital texts. Participants in the study are a group of students (18 girls) studying AS ICT as part of an accelerated learning programme. The study considers the nature (content, structure, mode of representation, nodality and socio-cultural attributes) of the texts authored by the students during the project. The study also considers the transformativity of texts and the affordances of digital texts to migrate from one environment to another and how this latter functionality may or may not affect meaning.
What I have learned
- limitations and affordances of concept mapping software
- thinking skills
- collaborative learning
- convergent technologies
- textuality and hypermedia
- dynamic texts
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