Supporting presentation of conceptual understanding such as concept mapping

 1. Descriptive Reflection:

In many cases teachers found it difficult to ensure the conceptual understanding of their students to certain topics. So, they use different ways to support their presentations in order to achieve the conceptual understanding of their students. Concept mapping is one powerful tool to support presentations. It is  a tool for assisting and enhancing many types of thinking and learning. 

It is also a diagram that depicts suggested relationships between concepts. It is use to organize and structure knowledge.

It is use for different reasons like:

1. Stimulate the generation of ideas.

2. To aid creativity.

3. Brain storming.

4. Communicate complex ideas.

5. Enhancing metacognition.

There are alot of programs that can be use to create concept mapping like:

* Inspiration, MindMaple, MindView, Prezi and so on.

2. Critical Reflection:

I like using concept mapping technique when I study any lesson because it help me to summarize all the lesson in simple and creative way. It help me to facilitate the understanding of ideas and represent the relationships between ideas.

When I use concept mapping I memorize things easily ans information still in my mind for along time.
I do not know why most teachers don't use it. It is very helpful for them and their students.It will facilitate their teaching process and supporting their lessons. Also it will help their students to best understand conceptual information and knowledge.

I study how to create concept maps with Dr. Ahmed in Introduction to Educational Technology course. The doctor tell us that when you want to create concept map follow these steps:

1. Select what are the key words or phrases.

2. Rank the concepts from the most abstract to the most concrete.

3. Cluster concepts that function at similar level.

4. Arrange concepts into a diagrammatic representation.

5. Link the concepts with lines and proposition.

I do concept map for ASSURE Model using Inspiration software. Actually it is very helpful software for creating concept maps. It give you opportunity to add pictures inside the map.

This is the link to my concept map:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_VWbCfnMUnVTZhVndMM0gxM0U/edit?usp=sharing

In the future, as a teacher I will use concept mapping to support my presentations and lessons to ensure my students conceptual understanding. Also I will teach them how to create and design effective and helpful concept mapping using different technologies. I will also recommend other teachers in the school to use concept mapping to facilitate their students understanding for concepts and complex ideas. Also to encourage their students higher order thinking skills.