Thing 5(b): Mapper’s delight

While reading about reflective practice for Thing 5 I was quite taken with the idea, suggested in Sarah Stewart’s presentation, that your reflections don’t necessarily need to be recorded via formal prose – you can use other mediums such as poetry, journals, painting, music, mind maps, or performance if you like.

So that’s why I’ve decided to choreograph, perform and record an interpretative dance expressing my feelings about cpd23 and upload it to YouTube.

Oh, wait, that’s wrong. What I meant to say was, I thought I would try creating a mind map as a way of recording my experiences with the programme so far: what I’ve done, what I’ve learned, things I’ve enjoyed, things I’ve found hard, and what I’m going to do next. 

My learning style normally centres quite heavily on the written word: I organise myself by writing down lists, I memorise things by writing them out over and over again, I can understand something much more easily by reading about it rather than listening to someone talk, and I’ve prepared for every exam I’ve ever taken by writing reams of notes and essays. So I thought it might be interesting to try a slightly different approach to my reflection on cpd23.

At work we have access to a piece of mind mapping software called Inspiration, so that’s what I’ve used. And this is what it looks like so far:

(Click thumbnail image above to view full size version)

It looks a bit unwieldy already, but I'm going to continue to add new branches, along with some pictures hopefully, as I progress through the course. I'll post an updated version during the next catch-up/reflection session in Week 8.