Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Concept Mapping versus Mind Mapping

The mind map can be contrasted with the similar idea of concept mapping. The former is based on radial hierarchies and tree structures denoting relationships with a central governing concept, whereas concept maps are based on connections between concepts in more diverse patterns.

--Wikipedia


Mind Maps reflect what you think about a topic. By taking a brainstorming approach to generating and organizing ideas, Mind Maps seek to improve performance by enhancing the capability of the human brain.

Concept Maps, on the other hand, are focused on the relationship between concepts. They allow the brain to make meaning by (i) presenting information in a visual format, and more significantly, (ii) connecting the meaning so generated with other information to further generate new meaning.

This grow-as-you-go spiral effect of the information sense-making process is now greatly enhanced by the new interactive capabilities of Web 2.0 applications such as MindMeister, which makes Concept Mapping the tool of choice over Mind Mapping for idea organization and development as the world moves on from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age.



2 comments:

  1. I like the video of Tony Buzan, a very clear explanation on the tool. Excellent! I have to watch it again to get hold of the idea.
    Sonia

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  2. So glad that you like the video.

    We used to say that "a picture is worth a thousand words". Now, a video is worth 10 thousand words.

    This is another illustration how Web 2.0 applications (of which YouTube is one) makes idea communication and development so much easier in this Link-to-Think age.

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