Mind mapping, also known as spider diagrams, is a creative problem-solving technique for creating a visual representation of your ideas. It involves organising a central concept and expanding upon it with related topics and information, which helps to clarify and deepen your understanding.
Mind maps are commonly used as a visual revision tool as they facilitate an interactive and comprehensive approach to study.
The term ‘Mind Mapping’ was coined by the British Psychology author and TV presenter Tony Buzan in 1974. His work was inspired by similar methods used by Albert Einstein, Joseph Donald Novak, and Leonardo da Vinci.
Buzan famously used bright colours and imagery to produce his mind-maps, as the visuals aid with the memorization of the mind maps attributes.
Preliminary Thoughts:
Using Keywords & Images
You should aim to use single words or key phrases to keep your mind map focussed and concise as well as using imagery where appropriate to make the map visually engaging.
Using Colours & Formatting
Furthering on from visual engagement, using colours to group associated topics together is a useful tool to categorise information, and use of different font types or line widths can indicate topics of importance.
Starting Your Mind Map:
Your Idea: Define the topic that you want to mind map about, for this example we shall create a mind map surrounding the topic of ‘Warfare & Military Tactics in Ancient Greece.’ You should then write this topic in the centre of where your mind map shall be, you can do this using large fonts, assorted colours, or whatever suits you best. It is not required to use imagery or a variety of colours within your work but may help for revision purposes in the future to highlight elements of interest.
Decide your Key Themes: Identifying important themes to the topic of interest can aid your exploration of the subject. For ‘Warfare & Military Tactics in Ancient Greece’ some of the main topics are:
From the centre of your Mind Map, you can use straight or curved lines to link the two together.
Expand Your Key Themes: After identifying your key themes, you can now begin to find the sub-categories. This will allow you to identify further key components.
Review: Ensure all relevant aspects of the central idea are covered and rearrange branches if necessary to improve clarity and flow. Additionally, draw lines between related subtopics on different branches to show relationships.
Buzan, T. and Buzan, B. (2006). The Mind Map book with Barry Buzan. Essex Bbc Active.
Tony Buzan Learning Center. (2017). Mind Maps® | Tony Buzan. [online] Available at: https://www.tonybuzan.edu.sg/about/mind-maps/.
