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Concept Mapping
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Assignment Number 2 - Concept Mapping
Lisa Hood ()
Paul Leslie ()
Peter Rawsthorne ()
(The Mun-sters)
CapeBretonUniversity
Partial fulfillment of the requirements for EDU537
Dr. Diane Janes
February 12, 2006
ED537 – Concept Map Assignment
The Mun-sters
This concept map[1] will serve as an introduction to the WebQuest described below for teachers and grade twelve students in their final months of high-school before graduation. They have completed all the kindergarten through grade eleven courses to be competent in Geography, Language Arts, Math, Social Studies and Computer Science. They are computer and technology savvy and have access to a multimedia capable laptop computer and a majority of learners have high speed internet access to their home. Their families usually have a digital video camera and most have mp3 players like the Apple iPod. Their computer science curriculum has provided them rudimentary proficiency at creating web pages and they are also familiar with weblogging. All of this prior knowledge will be applied in the WebQuest that we are creating.
The grade twelve Social Studies teachershave taken it upon themselves to create a cross-curricular WebQuest that will include curriculum from Math, Language Arts, Geography, Computer Science and Social Studies. The WebQuest will be a three month project that, if completed successfully, will provide the students with 20% of their final grade for all the previously mentioned subjects.
A school district in an average socio-economic area of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia has been selected as our test-school. The school has a mixed ethnic population with Anglo-Saxon and African-Canadian backgrounds making up the bulk of the population. The school district has been traditionally conservative with a strong Christian influence. The school board is well supported by the Parents Association Committee (PAC) in using technology as an enabler and the district will “loosen the purse strings” for technology initiatives. They have also stated that such initiatives will be better supported if they also have a focus on reading, writing and arithmetic.
As with concept maps in general, this map has been designed with the aim of providing a common and clear understanding of the project, thus giving the development team the opportunity to work in the most efficient manner possible.
Concept maps tend to become very dense and risk confusing rather than clarifying tasks. This problem has been addressed through the use of Flash software, which allows a flexible design enabling the user to display only that part of the projectcurrently being considered. Novak (accessed 2006) comments that, “… two features of concept maps … are important in the facilitation of creative thinking: the hierarchical structure … and the ability to search for … cross-links.” With Flash, the entire conceptmap can be displayed, but with a click the main hierarchical structure only can be viewed. In similar fashion, the elements associated with each general task can be viewed separately from the other items allowing cross-links to be easily displayed thus providing greater clarity.
Concept maps are generally expected to be contained on one page thus eliminating much else but the concepts. However, with the extra space generated by hiding elements of the map, descriptive text can then be added providing an even greater clarity to the concepts being examined. That this is an advantage is supported by Novak (accessed 2006) who notes that, ”final features that may be added to concept maps are specific examples of events or objects that help to clarify the meaning of a given concept.”
Thus, in this project, while the web site should contain an introductory page, the main or most prominent link should be to the concept map, which could be used in its present form, with only a few more additions of content and design. If teachers are viewed as facilitators, then the concept map used to explain the project to teachers should be the same one that will be used to explain the project to the students.
References
Campbell, K. & Kenny, R. (2005). Instructional Design Research. Retrieved on Jan. 25, 2006 from
Cohn, M. (2004). Telling Stories and User Role Modeling. Retrieved Feb. 6, 2006 from
Novak, Joseph. (n.d.) “The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to Construct Them” Retrieved Feb. 5, 2006 .
The Mun-sters Concept Map. Available online at:
Wilson, B. G. (2005). Broadening our foundation for instructional design: Four pillars of practice. Educational Technology, 45 (2), (pp. 10-15). Ellen Rose (Ed.). Special issue on cultural studies.Retrieved on Jan. 29, 2006 from
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