Mind Mapping for Divergent Thinking

A lot, or perhaps all of my posts so far have been criticising and complaining about why things are broken, but recently I was challenged to share some information about the things I think promote creative thought, or promote learning through methods other than rote learning currently employed by public education in order to get kids to ace those tests!!  So this is the first in a series of posts that look at how we can promote right thinking in education with different methods and tools.

I'm a huge fan of mind mapping, long before I ever realised it promoted and enhanced the process of divergent thinking.  But I've not mentioned divergent thinking before, so let's get that out of the way first (courtesy of Wikipedia)  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergent_thinking

Divergent thinking is a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. It is often used in conjunction with its cognitive colleague, convergent thinking, which follows a particular set of logical steps to arrive at one solution, which in some cases is a ‘correct’ solution. By contrast, divergent thinking typically occurs in a spontaneous, free-flowing, 'non-linear' manner, such that many ideas are generated in an emergent cognitive fashion. Many possible solutions are explored in a short amount of time, and unexpected connections are drawn. After the process of divergent thinking has been completed, ideas and information are organized and structured using convergent thinking.

Mind mapping is awesome when you're approaching a problem or task without a clear end result in mind, or a clear idea of how to proceed.  For those that are familiar with outlining, this is similar but non linear which allows you to quickly throw mud at a wall during the planning phases. It allows to you empty your mind and when working with others it allows others to empty theirs too.  It's an incredibly fast way to get the creative juices flowing.

Once the information and ideas are mapped it allows you see possible connections that perhaps weren't obvious before.  It can allow you to see new avenues of thought that you may not have recognised before. 

But as I mentioned above, perhaps most of all it's the joy of being able to follow a creative flow while emptying your mind and not have to carry it all around in your head.