In class with my individual adult student Jose we began simply looking slowly through the images. He instantly noticed one thing that I hadn't - the different amounts of packaging in the photos - compare the British family's food with the Bhutanese spread, for example, where there's virtually no 'future rubbish' in sight. So we re-opened a mind map that we had built up on previous occasions, and added a section on packaging, as you can see above.
Jose is one of those students who had never seen mind maps before but took to them with a vengeance. Previously he had really taken the ball and run with it with an earlier version of this food map: He downloaded it from my Google Docs, found out mountains of vocabulary and re-uploaded his new version in time for the next class. As I blogged previously, I like to make mind maps in class, either digital or hand-made, but the curious thing is that you get all sorts of reactions to them, from familiarity to amazement to consternation to road-to-Damascus conversions.
And today, happily, lots of engagement.
It was a road to Damascus conversion for me too, like Jose, nice to hear how he added to the mind map himself. This is what I like about web-based mind mapping tools, that you can come back to it. Great photos, sounds like a nice lesson.
ResponderEliminarHi Alan,
ResponderEliminarI'm also a mind maps convert - saw my first one when I was doing my GCSEs and have loved them ever since.
I often start a topic with a mind map on the board, which I then encourage students to take a photo of as a permanent record.
I'm glad you managed to use this prompt so quickly :) If you have any ideas for future prompts, please let me know!
Sandy
I'll let you know if something comes to mind, Sandy. But it looks like Almost Inf can run for years and years. It's a lovely stimulus to get us looking for communucation and meaning in anything.
ResponderEliminar