Mind Mapping is a powerful technique that allows you to make the best use of your brain power by using a combination of words, pictures, icons or symbols, sounds, colors and any other imagery you see fit into structuring and organizing your ideas together.

Mind maps can be used to help your students think and learn more quickly because they help organize information more efficiently.

The first mind maps were developed by Tony Buzan as a way of helping students take notes, by allowing them to disregard traditional linear note taking and adopt instead key words and images to represent whole concepts.

Buzan realized how the mind can form almost instants associations and developed a way to map these mental associations. The result was mind mapping a tool that allows students to write their ideas more quickly, using only words or phrases.

Mind mapping is not only useful in note taking it can also be used in creative writing, report writing, group study, meetings, brain storming, etc.

How to Mind Map

Mind maps can be drawn on a page by placing the main idea in the center and work outward in all directions, producing a growing and organized structure composed of key words and key images.

For best results use single words (or simple phrases) for information; print words; use color to separate different ideas; use of symbols and images; use shapes, circles and boundaries to connect information; use arrows to show cause and effect.