I started teaching the idea of mind mapping to my oldest two children recently. They’re at the stage where they are reading a significant level of books and I want to get them to comprehending what they are reading. I want them to start to produce book reports or oral presentations. However, if they try, they sometimes run into that age old problem of staring at a blank piece of paper and are nearly sure how to get started and how they’ll fill the page. The problem is that they are trying to start without the structure. It is easy to get paralyzed just wondering how to get to the end of a full page or two without a plan. I’d like to help them start on the proper foot and think about their subject rather than thinking about what appears like the daunting nature of the task at hand.

I had already shown them the idea of an overview and talked in their mind about the structure of a five paragraph report. This very traditional structure has an introductory paragraph, three details about your subject, and a conclusion. However when you’re coming up with the material to fill the report, you’re still drawing a blank particularly when you try to think about the order you want to cover your points as well that you are attempting to generate them.

Since the time I was raised, there are some new skills that produce the process easier. I told them that I take advantage of mind maps at the start of the process of organizing my thoughts. Mind mapping has less structured than an outline but it isn’t quite as free-form as brainstorming. I find that brainstorming does not give enough direction and I don’t think that’s very conducive to just how that folks think. I think it is much easier to produce a mind map as soon as the mind map is done, prioritize the nodes within your brain map to produce an outline. Once I have an overview I’m prepared to start my article. AI Mind Map Creator believe that one of the easiest ways to create this article from this point is to pretend that I’m talking to someone who doesn’t know about the subject that I’m presenting. I treat it in a conversational style. Or if my imaginary audience is familiar with the subject then I am probably going to be telling them about new details or new information regarding that subject. Once I have an idea of how to approach this in a conversational style, I could use the mind map as a guide to generating a report.

At this point it is probably a good idea to define what mind mapping actually is. A mind map is started with a central topic in fact it is devote a circle in the middle of a piece of paper. Alternatively, software may be used to build your brain map. Lines are extended from the primary circle to create a new node for each idea that branches from that main idea. The branches can set off in any direction, it generally does not really matter at this stage. The ideas that go in nodes also go within circles. A new node can be generated one for any idea that is associated with the topic. This can be the part of my mapping that is closest to brainstorming. There are also sub-nodes that may be put into each node in your brain map. This can break that node into more detail. This should be achieved in somewhat of a free format, rapid manner.

Once all of the topics are listed on a mind map, the nodes could be reviewed and filtered out should they don’t really belong there. The nodes may also be prioritized. They may be numbered in order of importance or in the order that they will be covered in the report or presentation. In some recoverable format, this could be done by simply writing numbers on each one of the main nodes. Given that the nodes come in order, this process can also be put on the sub-nodes. Once it really is done, the mind map can easily transferred to an outline.

When I develop a mind map, what I normally do next is record myself discussing the subjects in the order that I’ve chosen on my MP3 player. I imagine that I’m speaking to someone about this subject. It could take a couple of takes to obtain a clean recording without pauses. Each recording gets just a little easier. Once I’ve a recording that I am happy with, I use software applications that translates speech to text to transcribe the article into a word processor. I listen to the recordings with my headphones and repeat it into a microphone with the software running. Once I have my document, I can edit it the way I would edit any document that I’d write. If I desire to take it a step further, I could now browse the edited document aloud with a microphone and record it in audio format on my computer therefore i can have it in multiple formats.