INTRODUCTION
OBJECTIVES FOR THIS ACTIVITY
The college student will read the background information and research regarding computer-generated concept maps summarized by the professor.
Using the Kidspiration/Inspiration software package, the education student will create a computer-based concept map to use with the students (or student) in his/her field experience.
Following the use of the concept map with the students in his/her field experience, the education student will write a 2-page reflection of the implementation of the concept map.
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BACKGROUND OF CONCEPT MAPS
Teachers have long used concept maps to help students organize their thoughts about a particular concept such as a character in a story or important element of content like photosynthesis or linear equations. At the center of a concept map is a “proposition, which consists of two or more concepts connected by a labeled link. In a concept map, propositions are connected to each other to form a hierarchical, branching, and dendritic structure that represents the organization of knowledge in long-term memory. The basic assumption of the concept map is that ‘interrelatedness’ is an essential property of knowledge, and that ‘understanding’ can be represented through a rich set of relations among important concepts in a discipline” (Zeilik, M.). Often, teachers had students draw a circle in the center of a sheet of paper with the topic in the center of the circle. Radiating from this center circle, students would draw lines to other circles that contained the characteristics of the concept of focus.
With the improvements in technology, however, teachers and students now have computer software packages such as Inspiration that enable students to generate these same concept maps in a neater way. Just as students are more motivated to write when they use the computer as a word processor as opposed to writing the same essay with a pencil and paper, students are more motivated by using the computer to create a concept map, even though it requires the teacher to take the students to the computer lab. The concept maps can be saved, changed quickly, and shared with others through the Internet; hand drawn concept maps do not have the same versatility.
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· “Amidst all of the research that has been done in the field of education, concept mapping has emerged as the latest success in a series of new teaching strategies” (Abrams, R. et al.).
· “Concept mapping is an instructional strategy used to categorize information into a graphic form, creating a visual representation of the text structure and associated personal knowledge within the display. Concept mapping may be used to activate knowledge prior to composing and to scaffold students’ memory in all phases of the writing process by assisting students to see word, concept, and category relationships“ (Sturm & Rankin-Erickson, 2002, p. 125).
· In a study of 27 eighth-grade students in a mid-western city (12 = non-special education, 12 = learning disabled, 3 = mild mentally handicapped), “when using either form of concept-mapping, students wrote more” (Sturm & Rankin-Erickson, p. 134)
· When teachers use concept mapping (traditional or computer-generated), they must combine the concept-mapping with adequate strategy training; the concept mapping strategy may be an especially useful tool for [students with language and literacy learning needs] as it can be adapted for a variety of text structures and academic curricula” (Sturm & Rankin-Erickson, p. 137).
· At the Center for Electronic Studying, University of Oregon, Lynne Anderson-Inman and her colleagues examined the effects of computer-based concept mapping using the Inspiration® software program as the tool. According to their research, this type of program “facilitates brainstorming, synthesizing information, organizing it into logical hierarchies and creating outlines from which to develop written compositions” (Kight, Feb. 1998).
· “…classroom use of Inspiration (one of the most well-known computer-based concept maps) encourages users to revise or change the maps. They manipulate concepts and revise conceptual relationships” (Anderson-Inman and Zeitz, qtd. in Bruillard, E. & Barron, G.L.).
· Specifications for concept-mapping assessments usually include (1) defining the task demands in terms of a given set of concepts or terms within a content area and electronic information links that are provided to the student in a finite database and (2) scoring the concept maps using the Herl metric for scoring semantic content, organizational structure, number of links used in the map, and comparison with expert teacher maps that serve as criterion maps (Herl, Baker, & Niemi, 1996; O'Neil & Schacter, 1997). Several computer software programs allow users the flexibility of moving concepts together with linking statements or moving concept groups and links on a specific concept map (Novak, n.d.). Printing capability of these software programs gives students an opportunity to produce a product and share it with classmates or the teacher (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory).
· Inspiration® and Kidspiration® are currently among the most popular concept mapping software programs. Zeitz and Anderson-Inman (1992) conducted a hallmark study of classroom use of Inspiration and found that it encourages students to reflect and revise their understanding of conceptual relationships representations, more than when compared to students' maps drawn with paper and pencil. In follow-up studies, Zeitz and Anderson-Inman (1993) found that Inspiration is useful in stimulating students' prior knowledge at the start of a unit of study and that teachers used "the concept maps and outlines generated by the students to assess the level of student comprehension and to correct misconceptions that became apparent as the students entered and linked new concepts as they learned" (Kight, 1998, in North Central Regional Educational Laboratory).
· When using Inspiration with two struggling students, Kight (Feb. 1998) discovered that while the software package was not enough to improve student willingness to spend time working on connections and writing, “it made teaching both content and writing easier” for the teacher and “facilitated breaking through a barrier to progress for the students.”
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