Concept Map Reflection

I created my literacy concept map on

Spicynodes.com.  

It was very easy to use.  I created the bubbles (spicynodes) in an outline view.  Then, I could drag them to rearrange the spicynodes as I liked.

I actually started with Michael Wesch’s video and structured my concept map as an outline of his presentation.  Then, I thought I should have read David Warlick’s book first, so I created a new Spicynode based on chapter 1.  Now how would I bring together both Spicynodes without completely redoing one?

One of the nice options of Spicynodes is that the “Edit Content” tab has several subtabs.  One is “code view.”  This allowed me to copy the plain text code containing the content text along with the formatting and paste it into another Spicynode.  This placed the outline of the second tab from the video under the outline from the book.  Then I could drag to rearrange the nodes to where they made the most sense.

I rearranged the structure of the Spicynode until I had them organized into groups that made the most sense.  Some groups were only one level deep, while others were four or 5 levels.

As read more of the materials, I added vocabulary to the Spicynode.  Then I would need to rearrange again to incorporate the new concepts.  Each addition jostled other concepts until they fell into a better arrangement.  However, after a while very few additions were needed because they had already be covered in some way.

I really liked the concept map, because it helped me see connections and fit all the ideas into one big picture.  It helped to me understand how the disparate pieces fit together into my current concepts about literacy and how it needs to change.