Improve your Study Skills with iMindMap™ - Tips for Making Notes
6th August 2007
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If you are a full-time student or are studying from home, you probably make a lot of notes during your
lectures/lessons or when reading your text books or course materials. Later you will almost certainly review
these notes when preparing for an exam or when you have a written piece of work to do.
Disadvantages of traditional note-making
The main problem with making notes in a traditional, linear way is that it is a very passive process. Your
brain does not get very involved in processing the information. By actively engaging your brain in organising
the new material, you will be able to improve your understanding and recall of it. You can do this by using the
Mind Mapping technique for making notes.
A simple and effective way to make notes
Mind Mapping with Buzan’s iMindMap™ is an excellent diagrammatic way of organising key ideas or concepts from
lesson notes or textbooks. You simply take the essential elements from linear material (textbooks or your lesson notes)
to generate your Mind Map. In this way, you can capture all your notes on one screen, enabling you to see the
interconnections of certain ideas. What’s more, Mind Mapping encourages you to utilise the power of images to add
emphasis and association to your notes. Using visuals in this way enhances the memory’s storing and recalling
capabilities as well as increasing aesthetic pleasure!
Rob reduced his notes by 95% using iMindMap™
In looking for a way to improve his note making abilities, Rob Williams used iMindMap™ to help him study for his book-keeping exams:
“I think I must have tried every piece of Mind Mapping software available on the market. I purchased a couple which
have not really done what I want… it can take ages to build a map. In contrast, I have found iMindMap™ to be quick and easy
to use.
I am terrible note maker, I tend to read a text and end up copying the whole text into my notes which is why Mind Mapping
with iMindMap™ is ideal for me…you can only have keywords on the branches and not reams of text. I am studying bookkeeping and
have an exam coming up shortly and was daunted by the thought of having to read through all my notes again.
Using iMindMap™, I have reduced the notes of the first three units by about 95% quickly and with visually pleasing
results.”
Here are some tips to help you make notes using iMindMap™:
Tips for making notes from a textbook or course material
- Textbooks are usually neatly structured into chapters, topic headings and sub headings which can provide an easy
framework for creating your Mind Map branches.
- Build your Mind Map as you progress through the study text. Every time you read an idea that strikes you as important
or interesting, just add it to your Mind Map in the appropriate place. You can also add your own thoughts and ideas as
they arise while you are reading.
- Add detail such as images, shapes, highlights and colours using the facilities in iMindMap™ to help you organise the
material better and commit it to memory.
- When you have finished reading, you will have generated a single Mind Map which summarises everything of interest
from the text. The act of creating the Mind Map will have greatly increased the volume of information that you absorbed
from the text.
- You can review the topic at any time by referring back to your Mind Map. It is easy to make any changes or
restructure your map using iMindMap™ without the hassle of recreating all of your work.
- Print your Mind Map on a single page for easy reference. You don’t need pages and pages of notes for effective study!
Tips for summarising a lesson or lecture
You may want to summarise a lesson or lecture you have recently had to reinforce what was taught. Use iMindMap™ to collate
the key information from a set of notes you have already taken. This gives you a sense of the dominant themes and structure
of the lesson or lecture.
- Start by entering the subject matter of the lesson in the middle of the map with a central image.
- Create the main branches from this subject, each labelled with a key topic or theme that was covered in the lesson.
Remember to use single key words in keeping with Mind Mapping principles.
- Next draw connecting branches to the main branches and label these with sub-topics. If you have any of your own
ideas during this exercise, add them to your Mind Map.
- Add images to help make the Mind Map more visually memorable for revision.
- While it is necessary to be brief in order to create an effective Mind Map, you may wish to include more
comprehensive notes at this early stage of study. iMindMap™ allows you to add notes to your branches or link them to
external files such as Word documents or spreadsheets which you can open up when needed. After you have studied this
information, you will only need the key words of your Mind Map to bring it back to memory.
Note-making is just one of the activities that you can use iMindMap™ to assist you with in your studies. You can
also use iMindMap™ to help you plan essays and project work, prepare for exams, brainstorm, create and make a presentation,
for supporting group study, for revision and much more....