TRICKS

Mind maps are highly valuable tools for both teachers and pupils, as they provide an effective way to organise ideas, concepts and learning content.

In addition to this organisational function, creating mind maps can be used in education to foster pupils’ creativity and to present final learning products. This makes them particularly suitable for implementing a range of active learning methodologies, including:

1️⃣ Project-Based Learning: A mind map can form part of the final product developed during the project.

2️⃣ Cooperative and Collaborative Learning: Pupils can work together to design a mind map based on a specific topic or set of learning objectives, either cooperatively or collaboratively.

As we have seen, the educational possibilities are extensive and will ultimately depend on the teaching objectives established by each teacher.

Below you will find a selection of digital tools for creating mind maps.

In Physical Education, it is common for pupils to complete activities throughout the academic year in which they are required to gather information and present it in a written document. However, if these activities are not designed appropriately, cases of plagiarism may arise—in other words, pupils may simply copy and paste information.

To prevent this, I recommend the following:

1️⃣ Curate the content in advance.
Teachers can provide pupils with a carefully selected range of reliable resources. This helps to prevent digital information overload, which may encourage plagiarism when pupils feel overwhelmed and resort to copying and pasting.

2️⃣ Design activities that require higher-order thinking skills.
Tasks should encourage pupils to analyse, create, reflect, compare and make informed judgements. In these cases, plagiarism is far less likely, as pupils are required to select, filter and interpret information before producing their own response. This allows them to take ownership of their work and present content based on prior reflection and analysis.

3️⃣ Use digital plagiarism-detection tools.
These tools can be useful for checking the originality of pupils’ work. However, as mentioned above, they may not always be necessary when the activity has been carefully designed and requires genuine thinking and personal input.

The following examples illustrate the difference between a poorly designed activity and a well-designed one:

❌ Poorly designed activity: Pupils must collect information about and describe the different fundamental physical capacities.

🟢 Well-designed activity: Each group of pupils must design a training session based on one of the fundamental physical capacities. In this way, they cannot simply copy information; instead, they must research, reflect and apply what they have learnt.