Blog Post 4

I think developing concept maps for use in the classroom would be a productive way for students to oranganize their knowledge. If I were a teacher, I would use concept maps to help students gather their ideas. Making an outline before writing a research paper is extremely beneficial in staying organized and allows students to put their ideas together before trying to gather it all up to put in a paper. I would use Inspiration because I'm most familiar with it and I find it easy to use..and it's fun.

Even though as a student I wasn't fond of creating concept maps and outlines, I would encourage my students to do so. It may seem like a waste of time, but once you start getting "good" at creating one, it can really help in gathering ideas. Looking at a broad outline of what you're doing can help students see if they missed any important ideas. If you just go ahead and start writing your paper off the top of your head, you're likely to miss a lot. It'll also be harder because your ideas aren't all written out in front of you.

I'm not really sure which "week" this is referring to since we missed a week...so I'm just going to assume it's based on concept mapping. I really enjoyed using Inspiration and even though it's super easy to use, I think it's an important skill to have in the future as a teacher. Creating outlines by hand can be dull, but using Inspiration will help me add excitement into concept mapping that will hopefully keep my students' interest.