Hi Elise and Mariah,
I'm kind of glad that you both see some benefit in the pencil & paper method. Although technology is great, I too think it is important to not just "throw the baby out with the bathwater" so to speak. That being said, I definitely concur with both of you that there is a place for both the old and the new technologies. I love Elise's analogy of measure twice, cut once. And I think Mariah makes a great point regarding that we actually end up spending less time on the content if we get too sidetracked by all the bells and whistles of computer generated concept maps.
Actually, reading Mariah's thoughts on the pros and cons of pencil & paper vs. computer based concept mapping got me wondering if anyone has studied this. Well, they have! In an interesting study done eighth grade language arts students (who were using concept maps as a prewriting technique for an essay test), it was found that although the students using the computer based concept maps had better idea generation and higher quality of their prewriting concept maps, the students who used pencil & paper concept maps actually had better final essays. One reason the researchers think this was that case was that this was a timed test, and because the kids doing the computer generated concept maps spent quite a bit longer creating and tweaking their concept maps, they actually had less time to write and proof read.
More on which sort of concept map is best to use in which situation later!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Very interesting. I have no doubt I would be that kid who tweaked and tweaked my time away!
Good article, Natalie.
It makes sense--writing out our thoughts may help us work out more ideas, or develop existing ones with more depth, through the writing process. This may be compromised somewhat when using concept mapping. On the other hand, concept mapping (I hear you on needing a catchier phrase) may help students organize their ideas and make interesting connections between them.
This makes me wonder about how using concept mapping may damper language fluidity in a paper and perhaps even slow down a student's process of learning how to communicate with complete, or even creative, sentences.
It seems the tools can balance each other out if used right.
Post a Comment