I started teaching the concept of mind mapping to my oldest two children recently. They're at the main point where they are reading a significant level of books and I wish to get them to comprehending what they are reading. I'd like them to start to produce book reports or oral presentations. However, when they try, they sometimes come across that age old problem of looking at a blank piece of paper and are not quite sure how to begin and how they will fill the page. The thing is that they are trying to start without the structure. You can easily get paralyzed just wondering getting to the end of a full page or two without a plan. I'd like to help them start on the proper foot and consider their subject rather than thinking about what seems like the daunting nature of the duty at hand.

I had already shown them the idea of an overview and talked in their mind about the structure of a five paragraph report. This very traditional structure has an introductory paragraph, three main points about your subject, and a conclusion. But when you're coming up with the material to fill the report, you're still drawing a blank especially when you try to take into account the order that you would like to cover your points concurrently that you are attempting to generate them.

Since the time I grew up, there are some new skills that produce the process easier. I explained to them that I use mind maps at the start of the procedure for organizing my thoughts. Mind mapping has less structured than an outline but it is not quite as free-form as brainstorming. I find that brainstorming does not give enough direction and I don't believe that's very conducive to the way that people think. AI Mind Map Creator think it is much easier to produce a mind map as soon as the mind map is done, prioritize the nodes within your brain map to produce an overview. Once I have an outline I'm prepared to start my article. I think that one of easy and simple ways to create this article from this point would be to pretend that I'm talking to someone who doesn't know about the subject that I'm presenting. I approach it in a conversational style. Or if my imaginary audience knows the subject i quickly am likely to be telling them about new details or new information about that subject. Once I've an idea of how to approach this in a conversational style, I could use the mind map as a guide to generating a report.

At this point it is probably a good idea to define what mind mapping actually is. A mind map is started with a central topic in fact it is put in a circle in the middle of a piece of paper. Alternatively, software may be used to build your brain map. Lines are extended from the primary circle to create a new node for each proven fact that branches from that main idea. The branches can set off in any direction, it generally does not really matter at this stage. The ideas that go in nodes also go within circles. A new node could be generated one for just about any idea that is associated with the topic. It is the part of my mapping that is closest to brainstorming. There are also sub-nodes that could be put into each node in your brain map. This can break that node into more detail. This should be done in somewhat of a free format, rapid manner.

Once all the topics are listed on a mind map, the nodes could be reviewed and filtered out should they don't really belong there. The nodes may also be prioritized. They could be numbered in order of importance or in the order that they can be covered in the report or presentation. On paper, this can be done simply by writing numbers on each one of the main nodes. Now that the nodes come in order, this process can even be put on the sub-nodes. Once it is done, your brain map can easily used in an outline.

When I develop a mind map, what I normally do next is record myself discussing the subjects in the order that I've chosen on my MP3 player. I imagine that I am speaking to someone relating to this subject. It could take several takes to have a clean recording without pauses. Each recording gets just a little easier. Once I've a recording that I'm happy with, I use software applications that translates speech to text to transcribe the article into a word processor. I pay attention to the recordings with my headphones and repeat it right into a microphone with the software running. Once I have my document, I could edit it the way I would edit any other document that I'd write. If I desire to go on it a step further, I can now browse the edited document out loud with a microphone and record it in audio format on my computer so I can have it in multiple formats.