I’m here to tell you about how a simple acronym – EVO – changed my life and was a true turning point in my professional development. When I joined the Electronic Village Online for the first time to take the online session Becoming a Webhead (BaW), I had the feeling it was special in the sense of learning something new, understanding more about this online world, and connecting to like-minded educators for a period of time. Never could I imagine that the Electronic Village Online would be way more than my initial expectation. The Electronic Village Online was a new beginning of renovated passion for my profession as an educator, of lifelong learning and the joy of being always connected. It was not about a definite time, it was about constant feeding and improvement in who I was as an educator and person.

Every year, we gather for five weeks to network, to connect, to have fun, to meet like-minded international educators, and to dare. It is that time when we gain new insights on how to make a difference in our educational contexts, when we give ourselves some time to test new possibilities in the classroom in an environment where every educator is invited to experiment with the many choices they are given in the many online sessions they can opt to join. Throughout the years, as a moderator and part of the EVO Coordinating Team, I’ve come to see many educators flourish and gain new insights, finding new meaning to their professional lives and spicing up their teaching practice with a myriad of classroom ideas, activities, resources they learned in the EVO Sessions. I’ve seen them bloom to become great local leaders and multipliers of the ideas they’ve gotten from the different Electronic Village Online sessions. Some have even become digital stars, well-known in the online circles of educators via Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Webconferencing, among others.

In 2012, the prospect of educational training for educators looks more exciting than ever with our traditional sessions and some brand new ones. EVO will run from January 9^th to February 12^th. Here’s the list of what you’ll be able to choose from:

• Becoming a Webhead
• Developing our Mentoring Skills
• Digital Storytelling for Young Learners
• Digital Tools with Purpose in the Classroom
• TESOL-Drama Workshop: Teaching and Assessing English Through Drama
• Teaching and Language Learning Through Gamification
• MachinEVO – Video Productions of Language Learning Conversations
• MOODLE for Teachers
• Multiliteracies for Social Networking and Collaborative Learning Environments
• PLEs and PLNs for Lifelong Learning
• Podcasting for the EFL/ESL Classroom
• Social Networking: Making it Work for You and Your Students
• Teaching English to Young Learners and Teens
• Tutoring with Web 2.0 Tools – Designing for Social Presence

To check the session abstracts and to register for them, access http://evosessions.pbworks.com/Call_for_Participation2012

EVO is an eye-opener for everyone interested in improving the way we teach, share, connect and interact. I do hope you have the chance to experience this professional development program that is free, welcoming of novice teachers and more experienced ones, and totally addictive! I started as a participant and have never stopped joining the sessions and moderating some as part of my own professional evolution and the need to belong to this group of educators who are pure inspiration and passion.

Join us  to see what I mean!

Carla is a teacher, teacher trainer, and Ed Tech Supervisor at Casa Thomas Jefferson in Brasilia. She has been using social media to explore the potential of educational technology in the classroom and beyond. Carla is part of the TESOL’s Electronic Village Online Coordinating Team and has been co-moderating the EVO online sessions to help educators develop their digital literacy and fluency. You can find Carla in Twitter @carlaarena or in her blog http://collablogatorium.blogspot.com

Answering just a few important questions can give you the confidence to share your thoughts and ideas about teaching. It may take a bit of time, some reading and some effort, but anyone can do it. You can benefit yourself and all of us by taking this step in your own development as a teacher. Everyone has some great successes from the classroom to share, and all of us really do want to learn from you.

Here’s one way to get started:

I was a shy teacher for 16 years. I had learned so much over the years but was too timid to share any of it with my colleagues. I had so many worries: they would know that I wasn’t originally “trained” as a teacher, they wouldn’t believe what I had to say, they would ask me questions that I could not answer, and so on and so on. Even though I had years of experience in the classroom, and loads of common sense, I was lacking the theoretical background, in both the science of learning and the art of teaching, that always left me feeling like an impostor or a fake. For me, doing my MA TEFL was the way to become a complete teacher: but now, having recently finished, I realize that it is not the only way. I’m going to share a secret with you that can save you 1.5 million yen and make you feel equal to your educational peers if you’re willing to put in some effort.

There are only two small steps that you must take. In return, you’ll enable yourself to make a giant step in your own professional development and feel like a very well rounded teacher: define your theory of learning and your theory of practice.

A theory of learning (TOL) is simply an opinion about how people learn a language. There are probably 436,782,285 other opinions out there, so don’t feel like there is any one “correct” answer that you must follow. What I’ve learned from three years of reading about and discussing this topic in detail is: teachers who stop and think about how people learn have more success than those who simply teach from the teacher’s manual, or teach as they were taught. Simply writing down what you think leads to learning, and then giving reasons why you think like that, will put you way ahead of many other teachers who have yet to realize this simple truth.

The second step is to define your theory of practice (TOP). This is like making a list of all the things that you will do in your lessons to help your students learn. Of course, these TOP methods or activities should be directly connected to your TOL opinions. If you can decide to do more of what YOU believe leads to learning, and stop doing things that you don’t believe leads to learning, again, you will be way ahead of many teachers who unfortunately don’t know the power of this secret.

I ‘m happy to share examples from my own personal TOL and TOP. I’m always looking for new colleagues to share ideas back and forth with. Who knows, maybe we’ll work together on a classroom research project; maybe we’ll publish something together, or even better than that, maybe we’ll become friends.

Finally, the reason I wrote this is that I want to help those who would like to share their thoughts on this blog but don’t have enough confidence to get started. I think that is a shame, because I realize that some of my best ideas that I now share are the same ideas that I first used 15 years ago. Nobody at that time helped me to realize that I could share them with others. So now you know that you can!

Good luck and cheers for now! I hope to read your story soon.

Steven has an MA TEFL from Birmingham University. He believes that being a teacher means a never-ending commitment to learning. “First, we must connect with our students, then expect them to grow in some way; the rest we just work out day by day.” He is an avid collaborator and is always looking for new ways to grow.

You can learn more about his TOL and TOP on his website and his blog.

photo: sylvar

Having been in the TEFL field for a number of years now, I’ve witnessed the ELT pendulum swing a number of times (back and forth and sideways) when talking about methods and approaches. Throughout all these years, I have seen teachers simply ‘throw away’ all they knew and believed about a certain method or approach because a new, trendier one had just made the market. I am talking specifically about the time in Brazil when the Communicative Approach swept away the Audio-Lingual Method and its (then considered) controlled, grammar-based use of the language in a way which didn’t foster real communication. It was believed that students needed to be given every chance they could get to communicate (even to the detriment of grammar).

Time went by and teachers began to realize that yes, students seemed to have become more fluent in less time, but the quality of their communication seemed to have decreased due to poor mastery of grammar structures. Such awareness caused teachers to rethink their practice and as a result, the pendulum swung again: teachers started to draw from the ‘old’ methods the techniques which they found beneficial to help students gain a better command of the structures.

Dogme is the buzz word now. From what I have been reading, some people seem to support Dogme as a key to authentic communication while others seem to suggest that it is just a new disguise for under-planned lessons. I imagine that Dogme will enjoy its golden days for some time; however, the laws of physics are unquestionable. A time will come when the ELT pendulum will swing again, and take us all in another direction. At times, I get dizzy from the extremes, and I wish that the pendulum would stop in a middle location that would encourage us to combine the best features of the methods and approaches we have used.

How about you? Do you enjoy the pendulum swings, and immersing yourself in new teaching methods? Or do you prefer to watch from the sidelines, picking and choosing from new methods those ideas that appeal to you? Do you like the destination or the journey?

Márcia  Lima has been involved in TEFL for over 25 years and currently teaches and trains teachers at her own language school in Brazil. She is also an Associate with the International Teacher Development Institute (iTDi). Her passions include teaching (very) young learners and using technology in the classroom. She blogs at Where English is Fun and her Twitter handle is @bamarcia.

What is iTDi?
ITDi will be an online portal offering professional development opportunities for the full range of teachers from beginners who want to get off on the right foot, to veterans who want to reconsider or re-energize their approach in the classroom. Initially, two courses are being offered: Teacher Development (TD) and English for Teachers (EFT).

Who can join us?
Well, we need more writers, investors and supporters. With the size of our goals and the demand for professional development from teachers literally around the globe, we’ll always have room for more passionate educators to join us. For more information, please contact us through the iTDi website.

How did iTDi begin?
As the era of Collaboration 2.0 has now clearly arrived, just about anything is possible these days and almost everything is attainable for people with good ideas and the drive or determination to make them happen. As the world continues to get smaller, I now regularly have Skype meetings with people living on 3 or 4 different continents. The seeds for this kind of synergy began for me personally about 5 years ago.

MA TEFL/TESL Studies
I enrolled in what I worried might be a notoriously lonely, distance-learning Masters program and almost before my eyes, it morphed into a dynamic weekly online study group with colleagues who were eager to exploit the online tools that were suddenly at hand:

Back in 2006, we used a new thing called Skype, discussion forums, and then Google Documents to study together. We debated and defended our opinions about teaching and learning; we often laughed together and sometimes whined to each other; and we shared the small victories and listened intently during the stressful times; it offered all kinds of growth throughout a busy but meaningful 3-year period. In doing so, we also learned more than we could ever have imagined and built up enough trust to know that we’ll be friends and colleagues working on projects together forever.

MASH Collaboration
With the end of the MA TEFL, I wanted to continue collaborating and used the MASH Collaboration umbrella to embark on a number of new challenges with both old friends and new colleagues Theron Muller, Philip Shigeo Brown, Mark de Boer and Gregory Sholdt, and we produced eight one-day professional development seminars, embarked on two book projects and created a full 4-day conference “Equinox” featuring world-class presenters Scott Thornbury and Paul Nation. In the past 3 years, we have been able to reach out to many other passionate like-minded ELT professionals including Curtis Kelly, Marc Helgesen, Tim Murphey, Chuck Sandy, Marcos Benevides, Andy Boon, Steve Brown, Steven Nishida, Ann Mayeda, Alastair Graham-Marr, Joe Siegel, Colin Skeates, Jason Peppard, Kishiko Nashimoto, Joanne Sato, Andy Lawson and another 100 or so presenters and regular attendees of MASH events.

The seeds for iTDi
Then came a late-night Skype call that was to up the stakes and change the way I would be spending all of my free time for the foreseeable future.

Chuck Sandy and I were talking about what he might do for the 7000 teachers on the Facebook page that he shared with Curtis Kelly (Over 8500 now). There were educators from around the world gathering together online – looking for a friendly forum to share ideas, a community to connect with like-minded teachers, and ongoing opportunities to improve themselves professionally. As more teachers continued to join the page, Chuck felt a growing and pressing need to offer them something more tangible.

On a quest for a good idea, Chuck began to do what he does best: reaching out and talking to others who might see the potential in helping teachers to empower themselves. Everyone he talked to agreed that there was a need and a market for some kind of online teacher development program, but it wasn’t until Chuck spoke to Gareth Knight and I spoke with Scott Thornbury that we finally had the core set of people with the right synergy to change this great idea into something concrete: The International Teacher Development Institute (iTDi).

ITDi Teacher Development (TD) Course
Scott Thornbury, Adrian Doff and I are pooling our considerable writing and teaching experience to write the TD course with over 100 lessons offered within 24 different modules. Our focus is entirely on providing practical ideas that any teacher can use, and helping teachers to identify and solidify their own beliefs about teaching and learning.

English for Teachers (EFT) Course
For the EFT course, Chuck Sandy, Kate Cory-Wright and Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto have formed an inspiring team, bringing their unique teacher-training voices and well-known ability to communicate with people globally, to offer an English language course built around the one topic that all teachers are interested in: teaching and learning.

The rest of our growing team
ITDi has brought together a growing team of movers and shakers; authors, teacher trainers and pioneers in the ELT world, all under the leadership of our Managing Director, Gareth Knight. Gareth had 15 years experience with Cambridge University Press and immediately knew how to make iTDi a viable and sustainable business venture.

The strength of this new venture is built upon people first: technology second. We are a company created by teachers that will grow with the support and energy of teachers. We decided to build and finance this venture through our teaching peers, and likewise, we will share the profits and future opportunities of the business with our teacher colleagues. In addition to the core writing and management team above, iTDi has a growing list of authors, contributors, advisors and investors, including: John Fanselow, Paul Nation, Theron Muller, David O’Callaghan, Marcos Benevides, Mark de Boer, Neil. J. Anderson, Adrian Doff, Curtis Kelly, Philip Shigeo Brown, Todd Rucynski, and Mike Welch.

For many of us, this project is a culmination of the many years of experience that we have gained on the front lines of teaching in our EFL context. Not only do we have a chance to create something meaningful and important, but also, you have the chance to be a part of that experience with us.

Sincerely,

Steven Herder
Program Director, Founder, iTDi
steven.herder@tdinstitute.com

We’re better when we work together.

This isn’t just the tag line for Teaching Village, it’s what I believe. I’m a big fan of teaching degrees and licenses–I have a handful of my own, and value what I gained in the pursuit of them. However, I also believe that great wisdom comes from teacher experience in the classroom, and that we are all better ELT practitioners when we learn from each other.

You have a story to tell.

Are you a new teacher? An experienced teacher? Do you teach in a public school? A private language school? In your home? Did you fall into teaching or did you plan to become a teacher? Do you teach in your native country or have you traveled around the world? Is English your first language, or is it one of your languages? All of these experiences are unique and wonderful, and they’re all called Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language. Each time a teacher shares his or her story, it enriches our understanding of our profession.

Guest Authors on Teaching Village are just like you

Some are experienced bloggers who are kind enough to share their talent with us. For some, their guest post on this blog is their first time to share anything online. Some are confident in writing in English; others are nervous about making mistakes in public (which is why I always offer to edit posts, if requested!). Even the most apprehensive guest authors will confirm that Teaching Village readers are an extremely kind and encouraging group of people!

If you glance through the bios on the Villagers page, you’ll find teachers whose background and experience is similar to your own.

Please. Pretty please. Pretty please with sugar on top…

Share your teaching story, share an activity, share a lesson you’ve learned from your students, share your adventures with technology (or adventures working without or around technology, share what you’ve learned by connecting with teachers online, share your passion about teaching. Need ideas? Browse through existing guest post categories, but don’t feel limited by what has been done before. You can contact me by email or on twitter with ideas or questions.

We’re all looking forward to learning from you!

Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.

~Ryunosuke Satoro~

]]> http://www.teachingvillage.org/2011/03/06/yes-you-can-write-for-teaching-village/feed/ 0 http://www.teachingvillage.org/2011/02/04/where-ill-be/ http://www.teachingvillage.org/2011/02/04/where-ill-be/#comments Thu, 03 Feb 2011 15:43:50 +0000 Barbara http://www.teachingvillage.org/?p=2849 If it’s February, it must be time for more workshops! Just in case you are in the area, here’s where I’ll be!

(A quick look back–this video is from last year’s workshps!)

Tokyo OUP Teaching Workshop 2010 from Barbara Sakamoto on Vimeo.

I’m excited to be returning to Sendai on February 6th for the start of the Oxford Teaching Workshop Series. (you can read more about the workshops here) My first teaching job in Japan was at New Day School in Sendai, and I’m looking forward to visiting after a very long time away. My workshop will be practical (as usual!), exploring ways to make the most of limited class time by emphasizing multi-sensory activities. With Kathy Kampa, Charles Vilina and Ben Shearon rounding out the workshops, it’s sure to be a blast!

The weekend of February 19th is a double header. I start in Okayama (with Kevin Churchley and Caroline Marie Gerner) on Saturday the 19th and then shoot up on the Shinkansen for the workshops in Osaka on Sunday the 20th (with Setsuko Toyama, in addition to Kathy, Chuck, and Kevin). This is the third year I’ve had the opportunity to present in Okayama and Osaka, so I’m looking forward to seeing familiar faces (and making new friends).

I finish my OUP workshops in Fukuoka, on Sunday, March 13th. Besides being within driving distance of my home, I’ll get to present with Marco Brazil and Laurie Thain, two very talented (and always fabulous) teachers.  I can’t imagine a better way to round out my part of the workshops.

At the end of March, I’ll be doing an online workshop for the 4th Annual Virtual Round Table Conference about ways I’ve incorporated technology in my classes with young learners. Little Tech for Big Results was originally scheduled for the previous Round Table, but I had to cancel at the last moment. I’m excited to have another chance to share my experiences with tech and kids. I don’t yet know exactly when the workshop will be, but the Virtual Round Table will be March 25th and 26th.

April is JALT workshop month for me.

On Saturday, April 9th, I’ll be doing a Dogme demonstration for the Kitakyushu Chapter of JALT. We’ll be using a dogme approach as we explore the potential of a materials light, conversation-driven, emergent language-focused way of teaching in “Where’s the handout?” Japan.

On Sunday, April 17th I’ll be talking with the teachers in the Nagasaki Chapter of JALT about the power of connecting with other teachers online–how social networking tools and online resources can make us better teachers. In addition to being a topic near and dear to my heart, this also gives me an excuse to visit one of my favorite cities in Japan. My publisher agreed to sponsor this workshop, even though it’s not a commercial presentation, so that it will be free for any teachers wishing to attend (Thanks, OUP!).

So, that’s my schedule for the near future! Here’s hoping our paths will cross sometime soon

My Second Life self, Lynn Carlucci, being camera shy in 2009

You may have heard about Second Life . I actually hadn’t heard of it before I saw the course description for a TESOL EVO workshop  on Virtual Worlds and Language Learning. Considering that I thought an avatar was a diety in Hindu Mythology, I think it’s fair to say that my learning curve was pretty steep.

That first EVO was in January 2009. I’m still in Second Life, teaching and learning. It’s EVO time again, and I’ve enjoyed meeting some of the teachers in this year’s workshop, Village. I thought I’d re-visit my original posts about Second Life as a place for learning and teaching. If they look familiar to you then you’ve been reading my blog since July 2009 or have explored my Second Life page (Thank you!). I’ve updated the posts, since many of the places I mentioned have disappeared from the Second Life landscape. (But never fear—equally wonderful places have appeared, too!)

Learning to live in Second Life is a lot like learning a foreign language. There’s more than one way to go about it. You can simply create an account and log on, but that’s a bit like assuming the best way to learn Russian is to catch the first flight to Moscow without knowing a word of the language. You might become fluent, but you’re just as likely to have a traumatic experience, leave, and take a long time before being willing to try again. It’s tough to be a beginner. However, that’s the first reason that language teachers need a Second Life.

It allows us to remember what it feels like to be a beginner.

After years of teaching, it’s easy to forget what it feels like to be totally lost. Regaining that feeling is worth the learning curve of trying something difficult.

It’s easier to learn a foreign language with a good teacher (or else we’d be out of jobs!), and it’s easier to develop Second Life skills with good coaching. The coaches for Village, this year’s EVO, are everything you could hope for–knowledgeable, experienced teachers, and very patient. Once again, they are taking a group of 150+ teachers from absolute beginner to (fairly) competent Second Life resident in five weeks.

To continue the language learning analogy, I’m still far from fluent. I make a lot of mistakes. A LOT of mistakes. And that’s a second reason language teachers need a Second Life.

Mistakes are good. They help us learn.

I’ve certainly said this plenty of times in class over the years. Second Life makes me practice what I preach. Somehow, when I tell my students about losing my hair, or getting stuck in an animation, or trying to chat up zombies, they don’t feel as embarrassed about their own mistakes anymore.

Some of the teachers I met during my first EVO classes are still among my best friends online. The 150 members of this year’s Village come from nearly every continent, and time zone, in the world. Many speak languages other than English. It’s a unique opportunity to learn with an incredibly diverse group of people, and it could only happen online. Once people are your friends in Second Life, you always know if they’re in world when you are. For me, it’s like having a virtual teacher’s lounge–there’s almost always a fellow teacher, somewhere in the world, who’s awake when I am. Whether learning how to use Second Life tools or attending conferences (SLanguages, for example), or simply drinking coffee in Barcelona, it’s more fun to do things with a buddy. For a language teacher who feels a bit isolated, this sense of community is a gift. And, it’s another reason language teachers need a Second Life.

Friends matter. We learn better when we learn (and laugh) together.

Related to this is the chance to practice our second (or third) language. As in Real Life, language speakers tend to live near each other in Second Life. So, it’s pretty easy to find native speakers of any language. The best part? We’re using language to make friends, without having to buy an expensive airline ticket to meet them.

At the end of the day, I continue to visit Second Life because it makes me smile. The beauty that more fluent Second Lifers have created from computer code astounds me. I can fly over the rain forest; I can enjoy a perfect sunset in Bora Bora; I can ride a plane through a hurricane; I can walk on the moon. What’s not to enjoy? And that’s my final reason (for this post, anyway) that language teachers need a Second Life.

It’s fun.

The language teaching profession is not always taken very seriously. Sometimes, in the process of proving that we are professionals, we take ourselves a bit too seriously. We focus on the end result (an exam score or a grade) and forget about the process. This doesn’t mean that every class needs to be a party. Learning a new skill–whether Second Life survival or survival English–can be tough. But, using those skills to do something new and challenging can, and should be, fun.

If you’ve never visited Second Life, I encourage you to give it a try. If you tried Second Life once and gave up, I encourage you to try again. There’s still time to join this year’s group of teachers, making mistakes, learning together, and having fun!

Lynn Carlucci in 2011--less shy and still having fun!

Oh, and be sure to look up Lynn Carlucci when you get to Second Life. There’s always room for more people on her friend list.

Mind Mapping for Writers Article 3

We’ve come to the last of three posts about using mind mapping for writing. The first article looked at using mind maps to brainstorming, capture and organize ideas. The second talked about focusing on an idea and adding details. This final article will look at how to use what you’ve entered into the map to help you write your article, play, novel or, yes, even your school or business report. Mind maps are content- and purpose-agnostic. Use them for anything that requires thinking, planning, organizing, or writing.

Figure 1: Map of this series of articles

Once my wife and I made a very ornate mind map to guide a bathroom remodel project. On one map, we could bring together all the things we wanted to replace (sink, tub, towel racks, toilet, etc) along with hyperlinks to local and online sources for each of those things. We kept a log of all our emails and phone calls to the contractor, capturing the dates of and reasons for changes to our original plans. We took photos of installation issues, and attached them to specific branches in the map. And in the end, we had what some people refer to as a “knowledge object” of the entire remodel project. I’ll say more about that term later. Let’s get started on bringing the map to the written page.

Chapter 1: Filling in the details

When we last saw the map, I had added the symbols that would help me keep track of my writing progress.

Figure 2: Mapping out key elements of the story

Now I’m ready to start fleshing out all of the items in my map outline of the play. To get started, I locate the “Notes” icon  among the other icons in the upper right-hard part of the ConceptDraw screen. I find a branch I want to start writing about (describe salesman), highlight it, and click the icon. A Notes window pops up on screen, and I start writing:

Figure 3: Using the Notes window to flesh out the key elements of the story

As I feel moved, I can jump around the map from branch to branch, using Notes windows to capture my thoughts and impressions. I don’t have to proceed linearly. I am guided by what I feel inclined to write about at that moment. As I move to the next branch, I’m careful to update the circular icons to keep track of my progress.

Chapter 2: Exporting my map

Now that I’ve created some copy, I’m going to export it to show you what it looks like in a normal word document. You can see how the writing I did in the Notes window is integrated into the outline the mind mapping software automatically generates (the highlighting is my own). As I add additional copy to the map, I continually re-export the map and watch with glee at the map becomes less and less outlining and more and more writing.

Figure 4: How the Notes window looks when the map is exported to Microsoft Word Outline.

For writing projects, it’s usually best to export the map as a Microsoft Word Outline. But you can also export is as a PDF, PowerPoint, Web page, text outline, OPML file, or graphic file. You can export the map as a Microsoft Project file too—if  you’re into that kind of thing (we did this for our bathroom remodel so we could keep track of all the dates our contracting was promising us things would be done by). You can even export your map to your iPod.

Chapter 3: Chunking up the story

I noted in the first article how mind maps allow you to chunk your writing. Some people don’t like chunking. I do. I like the way you can bring up a notes window and focus your writing on one small part of the map. Doing so helps me concentrate on one thing at a time. I like the way I can export the map and, if I don’t like how the writing flows, I can go back to the map, move the branches and their notes to create a new flow, and re-export it all to see if it works better. And I like the way I can choose certain branches to export if, for instance, I need to create an abstract or want to pitch one aspect of the story to a particular media, it’s much easier for me to pick the chunks of text I want, export just those chunks, and fit them together than to go through a manuscript and cut and paste.

Chapter 4: Creating the Knowledge Object

I like the phrase “knowledge object” because, well… because I think it sounds pretty high-tech and mysterious. But also because it points to something larger, more encompassing than a document or file. The map we created for the bathroom remodel was a living object: It changed and grew as the project unfolded. It wasn’t just a list of data points: It contained our thoughts and ideas about the project, our emails with the contractor (and with the bank, I might add). By the time we  finished the remodel, the map represented so many different aspects of the project that “knowledge object” seemed like a sufficiently all-encompassing word to signify this one… thing… that was able to contain so much of what went on in the course of the remodel.

And it can do the same for writing. I used mind mapping to write a 50,000-word biography of two people. I mapped out the chronology of their lives. I used visual symbols to highlight the most important events. I hyperlinked to web sites that discussed the things they did in the world, to pictures of their families, their employees, the sites of their challenges and victories. With such an in-depth project, I wasn’t able to do all of my writing in the map. But I did enough to help me get started with a lot of depth and key points to put into each chapter. And I even used the map to change the flow, to move a chapter that I had in chronological order up to the front of the book to add dramatic interest. After I finished the book, I looked back and wondered how else I would have kept all those facts straight—all of the dates and times and events, the settings and the emotion and the lessons learned. In map form, it was just so easy to quickly search the map for the time period or event I was interested in, open up that branch and drill down to find the information, document or website I needed. I also came to appreciate how easy the map made it to chunk together parts of the story to pitch to the media, bloggers, and for other writing purposes.

Writing methods are as different as the people doing the writing. No one size fits all. But I do think that mind mapping is such a protean tool that many people find it a vast improvement over traditional ways of writing. The fact that a map allows you to instantly toggle between the overall arc of story and the most finely nuanced details—that alone can take much of the pain out of writing. I hope you give it a try.

Hobie Swan has been a writer and reporter for the past 20 years. He has been a producer for the highly regarded CBS radio host, Charles Osgood, and produced and directed award-winning documentaries. He has written one book and countless articles for San Francisco Bay Area and national newspapers and magazines. He has worked for two mind mapping companies, and is currently a writer for CS Odessa and its blog. CS Odessa develops ConceptDraw MINDMAP, ConceptDraw PROJECT, and ConceptDraw PRO, a business graphics application.

Note from Barb: If you would like to download these three articles, Hobie has also posted them on Scribd.com.

Mind Mapping for Writers Article 2

Welcome to the second of three articles about using mind mapping for writing. The first article looked at using mind maps to brainstorm, capture and organize ideas. This article begins with the list of ideas, and moves to the second stage of creating and managing complex content.

I’m going to wait until the final article to talk about using mind maps to actually write. So this is still geared for the “pre-writing” phase. As before, I’d encourage you to read this Wikipedia entry to learn more about the history and practice of mind mapping. Google “mindmapping” or “mind mapping,” and you’ll find a staggering amount of information on mind mapping software, best practices, uses, and history. Which all goes to show that mind mapping is a very common, worldwide practice—despite the fact that most Americans have never heard of it.

Figure 1: The map of this article series.

Chapter 1: Of all your brilliant ideas, choose one… for now

In the first article, we ended with a map in which I had organized the ideas I came up with while thinking about doing radio theater:

Figure 2: Ideas organized by category

Just to replicate real life, the idea I chose to focus on wasn’t on the first map. I thought of it as I was looking at the categories I’d come up with. To isolate this one idea, I’m going to collapse all of the other branches by clicking on all of the minus signs (-) on the other branches (Thanks to the strange magic of technology, these signs don’t show up when saving a map as a pictorial file. But they will be on the map itself.)

Figure 3: Focus on one idea among many.

But even now, it occurs to me that while I could just keep added lesser branches to the “buying a mattress” branch, I just might end up with much too large a map. So I am going to create a brand new map—one that’s automatically linked to this one—where I can brainstorm, organize and add detail to my heart’s content. To do this, I right click on “buying a mattress” and this menu appears:

Figure 4: Make one idea the center of a new map.

I choose “Send to New Page” and, voila, this one branch becomes the center of a new map.

Figure 5: Brainstorm and organize the new map.

The image of the paperclip above the word “mattress” assures me that this map is linked to the one I created it from.

Figure 6: The paperclip icon means more information is attached.

If you are working on a very large project, this capability of linking smaller maps to one central map can be very useful in helping you keep track of all the endless details. Linked maps provide an organizational structure that many find superior to the normal system of documents and folders. Just as you can link one map to another, you can also link any branch of any map to another branch on the map, a file such as document or image, a folder, any web page, and even to email. Thus, a single map can contain your ideas about a topic, links to web sites with information about that topic, documents you or others have written about it, as well as any number of supporting images, emails or notes. It becomes a single repository of just about every kind of information that pertains to that project.

Chapter 2: Details, details

With my main idea identified and put at the center of the new map, I now re-enter a brainstorming phase, jotting down my recollections of the experience. Since I am notice that I’m remembering things chronologically, I navigate through the top ConceptDraw menu bar to get to “Arrange Map” icon, click it to see my layout choices, and scroll down to the “Arrange (right) icon.

Fig. 7: Navigate the top menu to create the map arrangement of your choice.

This puts all of my ideas into a more linear list, with all of the branches stacked on top of one another on the right side of the map. This format makes it easier for me to list things in terms of first/next. (This just goes to show that sometimes the thinking that takes place can sometimes be spontaneous; sometimes linear.) Regardless of the layout option I choose, I still have the freedom to drag and drop ideas as I choose.

With the map arranged to my personal preference, I take a moment to use the F9 key to bring up on the right of my screen a library of visual symbols…

Figure 8: Add visual information to your map by using F9 to bring up a window of graphic symbols.

… and add visual cues that bring the map to life and help me remember its contents.

Figure 9: Visual icons communicate information “at a glance” and across languages.

As I review all of my ideas, I decide that it’s the “once I get home” part where the story really starts to get interesting to me—especially because I can now imagine having more than one voice in my radio play.

Fig. 10: Use visual and text styles to draw attention to specific parts of a map.

I right click on the “Discovered that there were people…” branch and click on “Format Topics” to bring up a window of choices I use to add extra visual interest. I highlight the text and use Format–>Text to change the font for the same reason. These visual cues remind me that the things I note in that yellow oval provide good dramatic opportunities as I realize just how much I’ve been had.

Chapter 3: Build an in-depth, flexible outline

You can continue as I did to use the mind map to drill down into your ideas and build out an outline of what you are going to write about. It just happens to be a form of outline that works better for some of us. I don’t know if it’s because of early childhood education trauma when I was forced to try to make outlines before I wrote my reports about the Civil War or westward expansion or the life of a founding figure. Whatever it was, my mind freezes when I try to create them.

As I said in the previous article, I think the mind constrains when it is forced to think in terms of what comes first, what comes next. Mind maps don’t care what order you think of anything. Think of it all, in any order you want, and get it down on the page. Later, after you’ve had a chance to just think spontaneously, you can drag and drop your ideas into some kind of logical order. As you’ll see in the final article, it is often the case that you find yourself needing to think now linearly, now randomly at any stage of a process. The important thing is that mind maps are designed to give you an interface that supports whichever mode of thinking you find necessary at any moment in time.

Chapter 4: Setting the map up to manage your writing

If you have a writing project you’re struggling with, or just working on, it might be interesting for you to try mapping out your ideas as I’ve done here. You might be surprised at how liberating it is—and how quickly you can work. Some people describe their first experience with mind maps as feeling as though these big metal bands have been removed from their skulls and they are able to think freely.

But it depends on the individual. Mind maps are not a panacea. They work very well for some people, and miserably for others. It if works for you, cool! It’s another tool you have to help you write.

By now, I’ve mapped out most of the main elements to the story and am ready to start writing more in-depth background information I can use later when I actually start writing the radio play.  I’ve used the F9 key again to bring up that list of symbols. I’ve added a green arrow, to draw my attention to this branch, and what looks like an empty circle. This is one of nine circles that capture stages of completion.

The circle is empty now because I’m just starting. As my writing progresses, I can choose other stages as the writing progresses until I get to the checkmark, which signifies that this writing is finished.

Figure 11: Circular icons help you keep track of your progress in any one area.

I can’t tell you how useful it is to be able to just scan down a map of a writing project and see how far along I am in each writing assignment. It’s very satisfying to watch as all those empty circles slowly progress toward the checkmark.

Stay tuned for the next article

Of course, everyone has their own unique writing process. I hope this article has given you a feel for how you can use mind mapping for each stage or your process. If you haven’t yet, I encourage you to download mind mapping software and start playing around with it. ConceptDraw has a 30-day free trial that might be good to use since I’m explaining how to do things using the ConceptDraw interface and menu commands. In the next article, the last of three, I’ll make the big jump, from mapping to writing.

Hobie Swan has been a writer and reporter for the past 20 years. He has been a producer for the highly regarded CBS radio host, Charles Osgood, and produced and directed award-winning documentaries. He has written one book and countless articles for San Francisco Bay Area and national newspapers and magazines. He has worked for two mind mapping companies, and is currently a writer for CS Odessa and its blog. CS Odessa develops ConceptDraw MINDMAP, ConceptDraw PROJECT, and ConceptDraw PRO, a business graphics application.

Mind Mapping for Writers: If you’re more artist than engineer, this approach is for you.

Article 1: Think first, organize later.

This is the first of three articles about using mind mapping to make your life as a writer easier or more creative. If you are serious about writing and have a “visual mind,” then mind mapping might be a refreshing way for you to brainstorm new ideas, capture and organize those ideas, manage complex content, chunk up your writing, and add new flexibility and freedom to your writing process. That’s a lot of claims. We’ll see if, by the time you’ve read all three articles, I’ve convinced you of their validity. I’d encourage you to read this Wikipedia entry to learn more about the history and practice of mind mapping.

Here’s what the articles will cover:

Figure 1: The map of this article series.

Chapter 1: The spontaneous mind. The organized mind

People’s usual experience with mind mapping is amazement at how fertile their minds become when working in this kind of environment. There is plenty of medical and psychological evidence to support the usefulness of mind mapping—for some people. It goes back to the left brain/right brain debate. If you tend to rely on intuition, think holistically, and in terms of patterns, images, and colors—behavioral scientists consider you “right-brained.” If you are logic, sequential, rational, look at the parts instead of the whole, and prefer written words to images, you’re left-brained. But none of us are either one or the other: We think with both sides of our brain. The problem for many of us is that the tools we use are designed by… well, by software designers—those left-brainers. And that kind of interface can be hard for right-brainers to work in.

Try a simple experiment to see which side of the brain you tend to use more. Using paper and pen, give yourself about five minutes to create an outline about something. Maybe you’re at the early stages of a new writing project and are looking for topics. Maybe you already have an idea and want to map out your plot or character development. Maybe you’ve come to a screeching halt and need to find a way forward through the fog. Or maybe you can’t write because you’re obsessed with something else you need to do around the house or in your life. Just pick a topic and start outlining.

Now stop and think about the list you just created. Is it a linear outline that starts at the top and proceeds down the piece of paper? Did you notice if, in creating the list, you found yourself thinking sequentially? That is, did you ask yourself what should come first on the list? What should come second? Third? Or maybe you were thinking about what was most important and should be at the top of the list?

Now try brainstorming about something else by putting the name of what you’re thinking about in the center of a piece of paper, and just start drawing lines out from the center and labeling them with ideas you have about that name in the center. Draw lines in any direction you want.

Now stop and consider: Was this method easier or more difficult for you? For some of us, it’s easy to be more creative when we don’t’ think in terms of first or last, most or least important. And for some of us, mind mapping removes some of the constraints we consciously or subconsciously put around our thinking. So if the second method was a bit easier, you just might be the kind of person who works better in mind mapping’s more spontaneous, visual interface. That’s how I am.

For instance, recently I began contemplating the idea of writing plays for our local community radio. I’ve written for radio in the past, but never fiction. I was a radio producer for health programs, preparing on-air talent to talk about the places, people, and ideas behind innovations in health care. I have no idea how to write plays of any sort.

I started pondering how to even begin to think about writing a radio play. I launched my mind mapping software and started brainstorming, just capturing my ideas as fast as I could and in no particular order:

Figure 2: Capture ideas as they come to you, in no particular order.

Creating a mind map is a process of attaching to a central hub a series of “branches,” each one containing a keyword or short phrase. Being a circle, there is not first or most important. At this stage, all ideas are equal. And there is something just so very liberating about getting ideas out of your head and onto the page without worrying about where they belong on a list. So the first benefit to writers is that mind maps inject a welcome dose of freedom into the process of capturing ideas or, as it is commonly referred to, brainstorming. My favorite mind mapping application is ConceptDraw. It’s one of the few mapping applications with a built-in brainstorming function that makes this process even easier.

Chapter 2: Work in an endless, expanding single page

Leap ahead now and imagine that the idea of mind mapping makes sense to you, you’ve got mapping software (or a web-based application) and have brainstormed some ideas. Never, I suspect, will you be as appreciative of “dragging and dropping” as when you organize your ideas on a mind map. It’s so simple. You look for things that strike you as belonging together, and simply drag together into like groups. You might want/need to add new branches under which you can aggregate similar ideas as I’ve done to this map:

Figure 3: Drag and drop ideas to create a logical structure.

I mentioned earlier that some people like to think holistically, while others prefer to focus on parts of the whole. It drives me crazy when someone hands me a list that continues onto another page. I try to lay the pages side by side, but even that’s not enough. I want to see everything in one continuous space. Mind mapping software—at least the better kinds—perform this fantastic trick of automatically adjusting the size and placement of everything you type into a map so that you can see every single one of the ideas in one interface. All of your ideas are nicely organized and displayed on one screen so you can see the sum total of your thinking.

I love being able to see all my thoughts together. It helps me see how they’re all connected, related. And it helps me what’s missing. If some of the branches of my map have lots of sub-branches hanging off of them, while other branches only have one or two things, then I start thinking. Why is my map so imbalanced? Am I less interested in those things that are underrepresented on the map? Do I know less about them? If I can’t or aren’t interested in filling out those sections of the map, then it might make sense for me to not include those ideas in my project. It’s this kind of immediate visual feedback that helps me understand where I’m heading.

Chapter 3: Sing hosanna: The unicameral workspace

As I said earlier, no one uses just half of his or her brains (the occasional half-wits we run into notwithstanding). Mind maps create a working environment that appeals to both sides of the brain. The maps are very visual, enable users to add images and icons to express meaning and information without words, use colors and shapes, capture ideas randomly, and see the whole of your thinking—all of which appeals to the right-brainers among us. But it also uses written words. It enables you to focus on one idea at a time, to get lost in the weeds by adding endless detail.  And, to the delight of those who love order, most mind maps capture information and ideas behind the scenes using a very rigid hierarchal structure. They do this so that the information can be exported in a logical way. And these are all the traits that people with more left-brained thinking like about maps. And these people love the fact that some applications (again, like ConceptDraw) make it possible to think randomly by using the map interface, then instantly switch to a traditional linear outline. With the touch of a button, the contents of the mind map in Figure 2 can be instantly viewed as an outline:

Figure 4: A map as represented in outline form.

You can go the other way too—from a linear list to a mind map.

Stay tuned for the next article

I’ve talked about the most basic but possibly the most liberating aspect of mind mapping. At this point, I’d encourage you to go online and search for mind mapping software, find one you like, download a free one or a free trial and try creating a mind map about something you’re interested in. It could be anything from making a shopping list, to thinking about a bathroom remodel to mapping out your first or next novel. Hopefully, you’ll find it liberating and possibly useful.

In the next article, I’ll talk about focusing on one idea and using different ways to add content to the map.

Hobie Swan has been a writer and reporter for the past 20 years. He has been a producer for the highly regarded CBS radio host, Charles Osgood, and produced and directed award-winning documentaries. He has written one book and countless articles for San Francisco Bay Area and national newspapers and magazines. He has worked for two mind mapping companies, and is currently a writer for CS Odessa and its blog.