The Mind Mapping Team - Introduction

Young children will use mind mapping during an entire school year and I will share with you their evolution throughout their creations. September was the occasion to launch the initiative with a first workshop.After a well-deserved break and a radical change in my professional career, I'm back full of energy with even greater ideas for this academic year 2012-2013. I promise you a lot of creativity, efficiency and fun.

The big news this year is the establishment of a team of young students who accepted to get into the mind mapping and be followed throughout the entire school year. The goal is to analyse their interest in drawing mind maps, the evolution of their relationship with the school and their homework as well as the potential impact on their results.

These boys and girls attending various French speaking schools in Liège (Belgium) are aged from 6 to 13 years. They are now part of what I modestly called "The Mind Mapping Team (TMMT)". This dynamic team will make you discover, through the various lessons of the curriculum, how it is possible to learn better and faster all sorts of lessons thanks to a rather original way of representing information and knowledge.

In order to discover the pleasure and specificities of mind mapping, I organized a discovery workshop early September. I started with a playful approach to the exceptional performance of our brain and the importance of our five senses. Then they learned a few basic rules but important for effective mind maps (sheet orientation, central idea, branches and sub-branches, curves, keywords, colours, images ...). It was also an opportunity to outline a first map without content in order to domesticate this new octopus or spider, according to the interpretations. Finally, my goal (without knowing initially if it would be feasible) was to invite each participant to draw their first personal mind map and assist them during the process.

The Mind Mapping Team (TMMT) - September workshop

I must admit that I was bluffed by the early pencil strokes. Once overcome the initial apprehension about not drawing well enough, all seemed to have caught the main principle. For their first map, I suggested to think about a basic concept of their choice among "water", "nature" or "colors". The next step was then to place on the main branches words and ideas that come to their mind naturally and develop some of them further. Finally, they added some images. As you can discover on the gallery below, the result is quite encouraging.

Alexis - 11 y/o - First mind map about nature

Baptiste - 9 y/o - Mind map about colours

Corentin - 6 y/o - Mind map about water

Manon - 13 y/o - Mind map about water

Robin - 13 y/o - First mind map about colours

From now on, I will share with you on this blog the various experiences from the team members (and from other children on occasion) within their own living context. Throughout many type of activities such as learning a poem, making a speech, organizing a group activity, understanding the geometry, memorizing the geography, looking for ideas for a show, etc ... we will discover together how mind mapping will bring greater efficiency and pleasure in the preparation and execution of tasks.

You will discover and learn a lot by coming back from time to time and by following these new amazing human stories. Do not hesitate to subscribe to the RSS feed or via e-mail if you wish remained informed.

The Mind Mapping Team (TMMT) hopes to see you next time.
Be open minded!
Be creative!