Michael Sampson, a prolific blogger from down under, recently posted an interesting entry to his blog titled: Mindmapping with Mindjet MindManager Delivers Greater Active Learning in Educational Environments.
One of the first points he makes is that mapping really forces (in a gentle way, of course) students to actually THINK while they are taking notes in class. "Due to the nonlinear nature of a mindmap," he says, "every new factoid that comes across the student’s desk has to be integrated appropriately into the mindmap, rather than merely being noted down on the next line on a sheet of paper. That is, the student is constantly forced to ask him or herself ‘so what’ and ‘where does this fit in with what i already know.’"
He then goes on to interview a recently graduated UC Berkely student and a professor at Oregon Health and Sciences University about how and why they use MindManager. Good stuff.