Mindmaping

Principles of mindmapping

Psychologists say that by helping us organise information in a free way mindmaps help learn and, importantly, retain information. It is based on well defined principled concerning how the brain stores and processes information.
For mindmapping to be successful it must follow the principles below.

• Be able to group like facts together
• to have the facts organised in levels of importance
• to be able to go backward and forwards jumping from idea to idea
• to use colour
• to link drawings and images to facts
• to be bold with no small text
• to have small amounts of text- no large chunks

The process

Use a large sheet of paper A1 size is ideal -I will give you some sheets if you ask. (It is better not to use a computer to start with!)

Start in the middle of the sheet with a title, give it a picture border, use colour!

Now put a branch to the title, make the 'stem' wide and colour it. Add the branch name at the end.

Now add the sub branches

Now add pictures and colour, use the colour to link information. You could highlight things you need to learn more about in one colour and things you are sure of in another colour. Sections you need to add because you had to look them up would be in another colour. You can use coloured text and highlighted text.
(You can cut out, stick on then colour photocopied pictures of complex things that you don't want to draw.)

Now add other branches but keep going from one to the other as ideas occur to you. Leave the map and come back to it later with a fresh mind. Add more pictures and colour when you revisit the map. Click here for an example.