Want to learn better? Start mind mapping | Hazel Wagner | TEDxNaperville
Summary
TLDRThe video script advocates mind mapping as an effective note-taking method that enhances memory by organizing information in a way that aligns with the brain's natural processes. The speaker, a mathematics PhD, shares personal anecdotes and experiences, highlighting the benefits of mind mapping in academia and business. They demonstrate how mind maps, created with a central topic and radiating branches of keywords, facilitate better understanding, retention, and retrieval of information. The script also includes examples of mind maps based on TED talks, illustrating the method's utility in capturing and conveying complex ideas succinctly.
Takeaways
- 📚 Mind mapping is a note-taking method that aligns with the way the brain works, enhancing memory and understanding.
- 🧠 The speaker's personal struggle with memory led them to seek out effective note-taking techniques, culminating in the discovery of mind mapping.
- 🎓 Despite earning multiple degrees, the speaker found traditional note-taking methods, like transcription, to be ineffective for true learning and memory retention.
- 🤔 Mind mapping encourages active engagement with the material, as opposed to passive transcribing, which can lead to missing key points during lectures or readings.
- 🌟 The visual and kinesthetic nature of mind mapping, using hands and arms, helps in better organizing information in a way that is more accessible to the brain.
- 📝 Mind maps start with a central topic and radiate outwards with key ideas and connections, typically using single words or short phrases rather than full sentences.
- 👤 Each mind map is unique to the individual, reflecting personal importance and relevance, which is why no two maps of the same content will be the same.
- 🔍 The speaker emphasizes the importance of being able to retrieve information easily, which is facilitated by the associative nature of mind maps.
- 🌱 The discovery of mind mapping was a turning point for the speaker, who felt regret for not knowing about it earlier and gratitude for its effectiveness in various fields.
- 🏫 The speaker's research supports the benefits of mind mapping, particularly in visual and kinesthetic learning, and its application extends beyond just academia to business and personal development.
- 📈 Mind mapping is presented as a tool to help the brain work more efficiently, using key words and visual connections to trigger larger ideas and concepts.
- 📚 The anecdote about the speaker's granddaughter demonstrates the practical application and success of mind mapping in improving academic performance.
Q & A
What is the main purpose of mind mapping according to the speaker?
-The main purpose of mind mapping is to help with note-taking and memory by organizing information in a way that the brain can better understand, store, and retrieve.
Why did the speaker feel regret after learning about mind mapping?
-The speaker felt regret because they realized mind mapping could have saved them time and helped them more effectively when taking notes and learning during their academic years.
How does the speaker describe the process of creating a mind map?
-The process involves starting with a central topic and building out radially with branches that contain keywords or short phrases. It is free-form and visually organized to reflect personal importance and connections.
What is the significance of using single words or short phrases in a mind map?
-Using single words or short phrases helps to trigger the bigger idea in one's mind, making it easier to remember and retrieve the information later.
How does mind mapping differ from traditional note-taking methods?
-Mind mapping differs from traditional note-taking as it involves visual and kinesthetic elements, focusing on key ideas and connections rather than transcribing everything verbatim.
What is the speaker's academic background, and how does it relate to their interest in mind mapping?
-The speaker has a Ph.D. in mathematics and multiple degrees, which makes their interest in mind mapping relevant as it is a tool that can enhance learning and memory across various subjects.
What role did questions play in Dan Barber's talk about fish, as depicted in the speaker's mind map?
-In Dan Barber's talk, questions played a crucial role in driving insights about sustainability and the nature of the fish he fell in love with, highlighting the importance of questioning in understanding complex topics.
How did Sir Ken Robinson's talk on creativity in schools relate to the concept of mind mapping?
-Sir Ken Robinson's talk emphasized the importance of nurturing creativity, which aligns with the personal and flexible nature of mind mapping that encourages individual thought and understanding.
What anecdote did the speaker share about their granddaughter's experience with mind mapping?
-The speaker shared an anecdote about helping their granddaughter with social studies by using mind mapping, which led to her getting an 'A' on a test for the first time.
What challenge does the speaker issue to the audience regarding mind mapping?
-The speaker challenges the audience to practice using mind mapping not only for their own benefit but also to share it with others, which can help internalize the technique and use it more effectively.
How can mind mapping be beneficial in business settings according to the speaker?
-Mind mapping can be beneficial in business settings by providing an effective way to take notes during meetings, understand complex topics, and communicate ideas clearly to others.
Outlines
📚 The Power of Mind Mapping for Enhanced Memory and Learning
The speaker introduces mind mapping as an effective note-taking method that aligns with the brain's natural organization, contrasting it with traditional transcription which often fails to engage deeper cognitive processes. They share personal experiences of struggling with memory despite earning multiple degrees, highlighting the inefficiency of merely transcribing information. The essence of mind mapping is presented as a visual and kinesthetic approach, starting from a central topic and radiating out key points, which are personalized to the individual's focus, thus enhancing memory and retrieval. The speaker emphasizes the importance of capturing key ideas and connections rather than detailed transcriptions, which is more in tune with how our brains store information.
🌟 Mind Mapping's Universal Application and Academic Benefits
The speaker discusses the universal applicability of mind mapping across various subjects and its particular benefits for academic understanding, supported by their 1975 research on the visual and kinesthetic aspects of learning mathematics. They advocate for mind mapping as a tool to work in harmony with the brain, allowing for compact, one-page representations of information with keywords triggering larger ideas. The speaker's personal journey from academic to business settings is shared, demonstrating the method's versatility in meetings and customer interactions. Practical advice on creating a mind map is provided, including the use of a horizontal layout and the importance of capturing connections between ideas.
🐟 Mind Mapping in Action: Examples from TED Talks
The speaker provides concrete examples of mind mapping by analyzing TED Talks, such as Dan Barber's discussion on sustainable fish and Sir Ken Robinson's insights on creativity in schools. These examples illustrate how mind mapping can capture the essence of a talk, making it easier to recall and convey key points. The speaker emphasizes the importance of questions in driving understanding and the use of mind mapping to organize and remember complex ideas. The examples serve to demonstrate the practical application of mind mapping for both personal learning and communication with others.
👧🏫 Encouraging Mind Mapping Practice and Its Impact on Learning
The speaker concludes with a personal anecdote about teaching mind mapping to their granddaughter, which led to her achieving the first 'A' grade in social studies. This story underscores the potential of mind mapping to transform learning outcomes. The speaker challenges the audience to practice mind mapping, suggesting that teaching it to others can further internalize one's own understanding and proficiency. The summary encourages the audience to embrace mind mapping not only for personal development but also for sharing with children to enhance their learning experiences.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Mind Mapping
💡Memory
💡Kinesthetic
💡Academics
💡Note-taking
💡Sustainability
💡Creativity
💡Key Words
💡Personalization
💡Visual
💡Practice
Highlights
Mind mapping is a method to improve note-taking and memory by organizing information in a way that aligns with how the brain naturally works.
The speaker struggled with memory issues and took thousands of pages of notes during their academic career, which was not an efficient way to retain information.
Traditional note-taking methods like handwriting or typing are often just transcribing without truly processing or organizing the information.
Mind mapping involves creating a visual, radial diagram with a central topic and branches for key ideas, which is more engaging and memorable.
Each person's mind map will be unique, reflecting their personal interests and what they find important to remember.
Mind maps use single words or short phrases rather than full sentences, mimicking how the brain stores information as images and key ideas.
The speaker discovered mind mapping after earning four degrees and found it to be a valuable tool that they wish they had known earlier.
Mind mapping is not just useful for academics but also for business, including meetings, customer interactions, and sales.
The visual and kinesthetic aspects of mind mapping, as proven in the speaker's 1975 research, significantly aid in understanding and retaining information.
A mind map is compact, with all information on one page, using keywords and phrases that trigger larger ideas and concepts.
The speaker emphasizes the importance of being able to retrieve information easily, which is facilitated by the mind map's organization.
Mind mapping can be done free-form, allowing for the addition of ideas even after the initial creation, reflecting a flexible thought process.
Examples of mind maps from TED Talks by Dan Barber and Sir Ken Robinson are provided to illustrate the method's effectiveness.
Dan Barber's talk on sustainable fish farming and the importance of asking questions is summarized through a mind map, showing the method's ability to capture key insights.
Sir Ken Robinson's discussion on creativity in schools and the stifling effect of traditional education is outlined in a mind map, highlighting key quotes and ideas.
The speaker shares a personal anecdote about helping their granddaughter improve her social studies grade through mind mapping, demonstrating the method's practical benefits.
The speaker challenges the audience to practice mind mapping to better understand and utilize it, as well as to teach others, which can reinforce one's own learning.
Mind mapping is presented as a versatile tool applicable across various subjects and situations, from academic learning to professional development.
Transcripts
[Music]
mind mapping
is a method by which you can make notes
take notes and help your memory because
you're working
in a way that helps your brain instead
of
gets in the way i spent most of my life
worrying about whether i was going to
remember things
i had parents who had wonderful memories
and other people in my family and mine
wasn't
so i went to college
four degrees including a phd in
mathematics
obviously i spent lots of time listening
to lectures
i made thousands and thousands of pages
of notes
i worried so much that i would forget
something
that i felt like i had to write
everything but whether you hand
write it like i did which ended up with
a
callous on my finger or you type it
you're still just transcribing
you're not thinking about what you're
hearing or reading
you're not organizing it the way your
brain needs to organize it
so that it will remember it better
so that you can learn it
store it and then retrieve it when you
want to and that's really important
being able to
retrieve it so also when you
are writing so fast typing so fast
you're not paying lots of attention and
all of a sudden people around me would
laugh
and i go what did he say what did she
say
because i'd missed it you're not really
hearing everything you can't write as
fast as someone
speaks so this is a mind map
this is a handwritten mind map it's the
kind that i recommend to most people to
do
it's much better to do them at least
when you're first learning but even
later with just a plain piece of paper
and a pencil or a pen the idea is
that you are doing something very visual
you're also
using kinesthetic you are using your
hands your arms
you're thinking about this whole thing
as you're going
you're developing something that starts
in the center
and builds out radially so in the center
goes the topic
it could be the name of someone you're
listening to it could be the
title of a book it could be a question
that you're trying to brainstorm
and then you build out just free form
and you
only put down what's important to you so
each person's mind map
even of the same talk of the same book
will be very different
because what you want to remember what's
important to you
is going to be different than someone
else and that's wonderful
it's very personal and notice also
you all you put down single words or
short phrases
this isn't whole sentences or paragraphs
do you think you store in your brain
paragraphs
how about sentences what about those
outlines you know you spent a lot of
time in school
roman numeral 1 a b c
remember that stuff do you think that's
what you store in your brain
i don't think so you store
images you store key ideas
you store the connections between the
things
you're learning and things you already
knew
so shortly after i finished my fourth
degree i learned about
this thing called mind mapping i had
never heard of it before
this as you can see is a piece of a mind
map
in fact it's the part of the mind map
of my talk but there i was
learning about it for the first time and
first i
felt great regret because boy would that
have saved me time and helped me a lot
when i was taking notes and trying to
learn things and especially getting
ready for tests
or being able to tell somebody else
about what i heard
and then i started to get angry how come
i never came across this before
how come nobody had ever shown me this
thing called mind mapping
and as i researched it i found that
there were places around the world where
things were being talked about in
england they were doing a lot of it and
in australia but we hadn't heard very
much about it here
and i finally felt very grateful that i
had
finally because it works like the brain
works
my research published way back
in 1975 proved
how important the visual and kinesthetic
is to people understanding mathematics
and now i had found a tool to apply in
all kinds of curricula
and all kinds of subjects not just
mathematics
so we need to be able
to do something to help our brain to
work with our brain
rather than against it and the way a
mind
map works it's compact it's all on one
page
you only write keywords or short phrases
but those trigger words those key
words trigger for you the bigger idea so
you learn to pay attention
to what you're reading or what you're
hearing and write down what's most
important so it triggers the bigger idea
so later when you want to think about it
and talk about it you can easily do it
i was attracted because of what it does
for academia
but i used it all the years in business
too
every meeting every meeting with a
customer every sales meeting
everyone that you go to fantastic way
to take notes and to explain it to
someone else
so here is how it works you take a piece
of paper
horizontally the reason it's horizontal
is so that while you're writing and
while you're reading the word most of
the words are facing the way we usually
read
by the way it shouldn't have lines but
if you can't find a piece of paper
without lines then don't worry about it
just
put it horizontal and ignore the lines
write down
key words write down short phrases
and very important the connections
between these things
you build out radially so in the center
is the topic or the name or the person
or the question
and you build out completely free form
writing doing your branches and writing
what's on it whatever works for you
and sometimes there was a subject you
were paying attention to and writing
something on one branch
and suddenly later something else comes
up or you think of something you go back
and add it to that branch completely
free form
again very personal the way it works for
you
so you can go back to looking at it
you are thinking you're not blindly
documented you're not blindly
transcribing something you're
thinking about how does it fit together
how does it work and
how will i remember it when i need to
so i'm going to give you a couple of
examples and i think it'll help you
really understand how this works
and i chose ted examples because i think
you might be familiar with it
the first example i thought i'd share
with you is dan barber's talk
about how i fell in love with a fish now
here is
the way i would have done it the
old-fashioned way right
i would have written everything down
line after line just
following what he said and how would i
explain that to someone else i have to
read the whole thing
how would i find a particular point that
i wanted to remember
i again i have to read the whole thing
just like
studying and going back through the
exactly the same things you heard the
first time
but here is the mind map
of dan barber's talk how i fell
in love with a fish so if you look at
the branches here
first he was a chef and he certainly
served a lot of fish
and he fell in love with a particular
fish because
he understood it was sustainable and he
did a little more research and he found
out that they were feeding the fish 30
percent
chicken and he decided
ah it's not sustainable and he fell
out of love with that fish
so later he tasted a fish that was
overcooked
and still delicious he fell in love with
fish too
and this fish was so amazing that he
even ate the skin which he said he never
did before because it was delicious
and he went to talk to miguel miguel was
the person
who he understood ran the fish farm and
miguel said i don't really run a fish
farm
i run a sanctuary for birds and there
are lots of fish there
and i don't have to bring any food for
the fish it's all natural they just eat
what they naturally eat and the water is
clean and everything
so dan barber learned a lot about this
and learned a lot about agriculture and
has recommendations on it
but what was most important about his
talk
is that i noticed he asked questions
really really good
questions and it was the questions who
gave that gave him
the insights he asked questions
about what is sustainability
he asked the question how could an
overcooked foot fish taste this good
how could a fish that is overcooked
tastes this good and then he asked why
do flamingos fly so far for their food
so it was about the questions they are
what helped him
understand the whole issue and then be
able to share it with us
and you see a mind map allows me
to explain it to you you can follow what
i am saying
let's do another one sir ken robinson
has done a number of talks
he talked about creativity in schools
and claims that schools are killing
creativity
and here again is my little hand done
mind map and i do recommend that when
people are first learning them
they do that but you'll find even later
even after you get really good at it
just grabbing a piece of paper and a
pencil
that's handy at the moment you want to
take notes
you'll do that all the time you won't
have to worry about doing it so
in any special form but of course
when you want other people to read your
handwriting sometimes it's not so good i
admit that
so i do put it sometimes into a computer
program and there are lots of them
and that allows other people to read it
as well
so ken robinson is the one who talked
about creativity in school
and he said that the problem the good
thing about children
is that children aren't afraid to be
wrong and so therefore they're more
creative
but we kind of schooled some of that out
of them
he also had some wonderful quotes that i
wanted to remember
one of his quotes had to do with the
fact that if
insects were gone he said all life would
be over
but if humans were gone the rest of life
would flourish
i thought that was pretty good and i
wanted to make sure i remembered it so
it's one of my branches
he also talked ab about the
use of jokes and he had lots of jokes in
his
talk and there were so many jokes and i
also wanted to keep track of some of
them so i put a branch out there for
jokes that i wanted to remember one of
them
was imagine for a moment that you're an
english teacher and you have nine year
old shakespeare in your class
how are you going to handle that right
so here i have a mind map where i showed
what was important to me
in his talk and
being able to do that on a mind map
allows you
to be able to pay attention to just what
you want
write down just the things that you care
about
and there they are ready for you to
explain
and he wanted creativity at the top of
the pyramid
along with literacy and i'm reminded of
that
when i look at the mind map
so what about you maybe you're feeling a
little angry too
if you have never heard of this before
maybe you're thinking you could have
been helping your brain
all along or maybe you knew about this a
bit
but never really paid attention and
learned
to use it it takes some practice
anything new that you do
takes some practice
so i challenge you now to practice
using mind mapping and you'll really be
helping your brain i have one last
little
uh story or anecdote to share with you
and that is that some years ago i was
asked to help my
young granddaughter who was not doing
well in
social studies and i went over to help
her
and i showed her how to mind map and she
mind mapped the chapter about the us
government
and the next day she got an a the first
a she'd ever gotten in social studies
it was very exciting so two days ago
i called her and i asked her
hey do you remember that day i came over
and showed you mind mapping
and she said i sure do we had all these
colored pens and we drew this picture
and i really understood that chapter and
i did very well on the test the next day
and
i kept using it in school especially in
high school
so i challenge you not only for you
to practice mind mapping and learn it
better
but share it with some others when you
do that
you will internalize it better and be
able to use it better teach
someone else and especially teach some
children to use mind mapping thank you
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