Originally posted by Rebecca on January 20, 2019
In teaching the writing process, brainstorming and organizing ideas are critical skills to employ when writing in another language. I wanted to find an app that allowed for both synchronous and asynchronous input. MindMeister has proven to be a gem of a product. The writing component of my course has the students learning how to write an advantages or diasdvantages five-paragraph essay. Teaching them how to successfully brainstorm and outline is always challenging. I had often asked them to brainstorm/outline at home thinking that class time would be better served in supporting the acutal writing. I’m now questioning this practice. What I want to be able to see is the process – what ideas are students generating and why. Managing this in a classroom in a course that is already jam packed is challenging from a time management perspective.
MindMeister allows users to generate a mindmap together. Last week, I had 17 students using this app to create and organize a brainstorm on the advantages of owning a smartphone. The beauty of MindMeister is that users can apply a voting feature to select what they believe are strong ideas to pursue in the outlining phase. They can also comment on why they made that choice. This is where I believe the app transcends a paper-based approach.
We have been asked to consider the cultural implications of a mobile world. Previous mind mapping apps have allowed for a digital reproduction of what I could more easily achieve on the board with coloured markers. I could take a picture of the board and share the map easily. What gets lost there is the why. This comes out in the oral conversation we have in the classroom, but it is difficult to capture. What I want students to be able to do is share why they think an idea has wheels. Here is where cultures meet in my classroom. Students from South Sudan have very different views on the advantages of smartphones than those from Japan. In allowing a collaborative brainstorm (vs assigning this as an individual task to be done at home), students are forced to confront ideas that are sometimes wildly different from their own and critically evaluate them relative to their merit in the type of writing required, namely academic writing in the rhetorical pattern of advantages/disadvantages writing. Continually developing my own awareness of teaching in such a diverse environment (I currently have 17 students from 15 different countries) builds my intercultural competence and allows me to (Parrsih & Linder-VanBerschot, 2010) “[understand] and [appreciate] the cultural differences of students in order to make the appropriate instructional decisions that will enhance the learning” (p.10).
This app affords a number of different possibilites – coming to consesus by voting, supporting input by commenting, reviewing sections of the map using the slideshow feature, exporting the map (a paid feature) and compatibility with G-Suite (paid subscription).
Reference
Parrish, P., & Linder-VanBerschot, J. (2010). Cultural dimensions of learning: Addressing the challenges of multicultural instruction. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 11(2), 1-19. doi:10.19173/irrodl.v11i2.809
As a student, I give MindMeister two thumbs up as it has supported me in my own educational journey. I used this tool for the first time in University with my group to create a mindmap. It was neat that we were able to work together to expand our knowledge of a controversial subject. I can see how this technology would be an effective way to support the writing process. It’s important for educators to remember that each student comes into the classroom with their own set of beliefs and values which stem from their culture and experiences. MindMeister is a great collaborative space where students can learn to appreciate one another’s perspectives. The most remarkable thing about this technology is that it has the potential to bring students closer together, especially in distance education when students are living in different parts of the world.