I teach several technical courses online and I’ve been thinking about ways to get my students more involved in a group. However, being online, that’s hard, so I’m trying the idea of collaborative mind mapping with my students in Antenna Modeling. I’m trying two sites where free accounts are available. On Mindmeister (http://www.mindmeister.com) and Bubble.us (http://www.bubbl.us/).

The major objective of this effort is to see if I can help people more with the course, to improve the graduation rate. Antenna Modeling, since it’s setup as a self-study course with little need to send things to the teacher, often has problems. It’s easier when I can teach in a classroom where I can see people’s reactions and jump in to help when help is needed. Online I can’t see a problem developing, so it’s hard to help until it’s almost too late.

Most of my work so far has been on Mindmeister. One of the mind maps I’m working on with students is about selecting software. Here’s the start of the map:

We’ve started another map on definitions and another on basic modeling. You’re welcome to come take a look at what we’ve done and are doing, or join in the collaboration if you’d like. If nothing else, we’re building a collection of maps that will be useful for figuring out what’s important to learn.

If anything useful comes out of this effort, I’ll share it with you. If you’re working on assembling some sort of knowledge, whether you’re teaching something, designing something, or just learning something, an online mind map built as a collaboration can be an effective method of bringing everyone together. I used to do this kind of thing using GoToMeeting, but this looks like a better, more hands on way to do it.

UPDATED: Spelling correction

Categories: Practical Applications, Tools, Web & Internet Communications
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There are lots of good ways to take notes when you’re trying to learn something. Often, a way I find useful is to take them right in the book I’m reading.

I have conversations with my books. I put comments, highlights, mind maps, and whatever in my books. For example, I was working on some material for online learning and was working with the book Pragmatic Thinking & Learning by Andy Hunt:

While reviewing the material as I was working out what I want to write, I came across some pages that I had worked on and added to. One of the major chapters here is ‘Learn Deliberately’ which I take very much to heart. Here is what the book looks like at this point:

I was looking for general techniques and recommendations for deliberate learning. Andy certainly approaches this very much in common with the way I do.

I also wanted some material on cognitive biases which was in the chapter labeled ‘Debug Your Mind’. Here’s what the page looked like after I’d taken some notes:

My point here is not necessarily that you should be marking up your books like this. Sometimes you can’t because you don’t own the book, but don’t be afraid to. All that was necessary to work with this book was the book and a couple of colored markers.

I approached these chapters like this:

1. I scanned the chapter quickly noting important information, summaries, diagrams, and so forth. I used a marker to leave a highlight at places I wanted to review in more detail.
2. I went back and read through the chapter more completely, highlighting what I considered to be important points.
3. I went to the front page of the chapter with its facing empty page and drew up a mind map of the chapter as I understood it.
4. As part of the mind map, I added some small drawings to call out key points
5. Using the mind map, I revisited sections of the chapter to make sure I got it right.

A lot of work? Yes ….. and No. It didn’t take too long to go through these chapters, I cam away from the study knowing the material pretty well, and I got the input I wanted for the material I’m working on. All in all, a good effort.

Categories: Learning, Practical Applications
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Learning is a big topic and one that a lot of disagreement still exists over. Unfortunately, but the time there is general agreement, we’ll already be dead, so to get practical about it, we need to use what we know now as effectively as we can.

I wrote a piece called ‘Learning to Learn‘ that I’ve made available for download. I plan to extend this to talk about Online Learning, but this is a good place to start.

Categories: Learning, Practical Applications, Skills
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SECOND - Mindmapping - Mindmapping continues to be a major tool in my arsenal when it comes to initial work on topics or problems. I worked with several tools in the course of this project and don’t see a way to get rid of any of them.

My Journal - Mindmapping in my journal is essential to me as i start making sense of something. I can get high level information together, find links between different pieces of information, and develop my understanding.

As I read or study a piece of material, I mind map it in my journal. I normally use a two-page layout for major mind maps with lots of information and one-page for high level overviews. I also use my journal for mind dumps to get out what I know when I’m starting to read.

Mind Mapping Software - I find that there is a definite advantage at some point of shifting to software to work with the information. The point in this project where it started to make sense was just before I started writing. As I was gathering information and sorting out my sense of the situation, I used my journal to mind map informally, but as I got near to needing to put the information into a meaningful linear format, I used mindmapping software to 1) dump everything I could remember about the specific piece I was working on. I did this for each lesson. 2) I reviewed my mind dump and determined where I had holes. I indicated this by putting questions into the mind map which I wanted to answer. 3) I found answers within my research material for the questions I had on the mind map. 4) I did additional research as necessary to answer the remaining questions. Finally 5) I organized the mind map into an outline to order my thoughts for linear presentation. In some cases I would have liked to use a non-linear presentation, but the format required linear presentation for the material. It would also have taken time I was not given to translate the course into a non-linear format.

One piece of software I used extensively in this process was the freeware FreeMind. For example, this is part of a dump I did on NVIS propagation in the final stages of writing a new lesson:

I find this is a very good way to get all the information out and organized so I can get ready for the actual writing.

Categories: General Thoughts, Practical Applications, Tools
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As I finish up a major project updating some online training material, it’s time to reflect on the tools I’ve used and what they brought to the effort.

FIRST - Scrivener - This was my first major project where I used Scrivener to support the project from beginning to end. I played with it and used it for portions of other things, but this time I started with it to start the project and finished with it as well. So on reflection, was it useful or not?

I have to say that Scrivener was of major use to me during the project. I setup my research in different folders, identified and drafted the lesson units, and brought everything together easily. It’s ability to open two document windows allowed me to see what I was writing at the same time as I had a piece of research available online.

During the writing, I reorganized several times, shifting research materials and building new categories as folders in which I placed other folders. My biggest problem was keeping my references straight. If I kept the full web page as I needed to, I had to download the page first to edit and get rid of extraneous stuff in the page. If I let Scrivener bring the page it, it brought the whole page including embedded ads and such, but it kept the reference to the page straight. Eventually, I developed the habit of recording reference information as part of every research document, but it took some time to sink into my head.

… More later

Categories: General Thoughts, Practical Applications, Tools
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One of the things that turns off a lot of technical people about journaling is that nearly everything you can find about it focuses on topics that most techies just aren’t interested in, at least not in the soft way they’re treated. A lot of what’s written about journaling is introspective, examining your life or other people’s lives. More like a young girl’s diary than a journal.

If you go into a store to buy a journal and look at what they offer, you’ll see covers with flowers, and jewelry, and all sorts of other things associated with femininity and not with technology. I have yet to find a notebook offered as a journal with pictures of computers on the cover. :o)

That being said, a journal doesn’t have to be about self-exploration or keeping a record of life-events. I’m afraid that I learned to keep a journal more in the spirit of the stereotypical 19th century gentleman scientist. It’s a place to record notes, observations, sketches, or whatever associated with what I’m working on. As Steve Pavlina discusses in his recent post Journaling as a Problem-Solving Tool, it’s also a great place to think about problem solving. This alone makes it an ideal tool for making your ideas clear.

I learned journaling by keeping lab notebooks in college. I expanded to using notebooks for all my courses and eventually for all of my learning as well.

Using a notebook for problem solving was best expressed in the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

“When you’ve hit a really tough one, tried everything, racked your brain and nothing works, and you know that this time Nature has really decided to be difficult, you say, “Okay, Nature, that’s the end of the nice guy,” and you crank up the formal scientific method.

“For this you keep a lab notebook. Everything gets written down, formally, so that you know at all times where you are, where you’ve been, where you’re going and where you want to get. In scientific work and electronics technology this is necessary because otherwise the problems get so complex you get lost in them and confused and forget what you know and what you don’t know and have to give up. In cycle maintenance things are not that involved, but when confusion starts it’s a good idea to hold it down by making everything formal and exact. Sometimes just the act of writing down the problems straightens out your head as to what they really are.”

Categories: Practical Applications, The process
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Over the last several days I’ve done a number of things with my journal that have led me to say something about how important a journal can be to your writing and speaking … in fact to everything that you do. I’m going to use the next several posts to discuss my journal and how important it is to me and the many ways I use it.

My journal is a notebook, roughly the same size as the composition books you may have used in school. I stick to a size around 6 X 9 inches. Some years ago, I purchased a leather cover in that size to make it more acceptable in high-level meetings. I keep the journal in ink and use multiple color pens.

Some of the things that I do in my journal include:

• Writing letters that will never be sent - in order to help me decide how to vote, I wrote a letter to John McCain which will never be sent. In it I expressed my thoughts, frustrations, and the issues as I saw them. it helped me to decide on my vote. I’ve done the same thing in the past with letters to bosses and others to get all my ideas out and review them before I actually try to communicate. If I don’t take the time to do this, it’s easy for me to literally trip over my words and miscommunicate what I really mean.
• Organizing Impressions - I’ve been working on a case study about HP Printers. I took a 2 page spread in my journal and started mind mapping everything I knew and then started filling in holes that I found in the mind map by researching additional material
• Mapping Concepts - when you are writing or speaking, you need to be very clear on the concepts you’re using, not just for yourself but for your audience. Mapping the concepts and their definitions in my journal helps me to be clear and communicate well
• Meeting Notes - When I’m in a meeting, I normally take notes in my journal. This gives me a record, taken during the meeting and carefully preserved in my journal, that I can go back to to make sure I’ve got things right. The 6 X 9 inch page size gives me enough space to record what’s important.
• Organizing Notes - After a meeting, I’ll take a different color pen and add to the meeting notes as I gather information on important points. I’ll use a highlighter to mark commitments made during the meeting.
• Planning Projects - One of my first steps in organizing a project is to create a list of what needs to be done. I do that in a mind map in my journal.
• Laying out Lesson Plans - I’m working on course notes for an online course. I’ve mapped the important points in my journal as the basis for additional research
• Blog Post Notes - The start of this post is a mind map that started with the central idea ‘Keeping a Journal’. Several other blog posts are in various stages of development in my journal as well.
• Notes on Books I’m Reading - One of the most powerful ways I know to learn is to take notes on the material, ask yourself questions to answer during your reading, and relate the material to things you already know. I’m doing this now on a technical book I’m working through right now.

Seems like a lot doesn’t it? It does, but each of these are taken from pages in my journal starting on the 1st of November, just a few days ago. Some of these pages were written in the middle of the night when I woke up and couldn’t sleep without dumping something out of my mind. Others were written while reading or in meetings. I find that I need to get ideas out on paper when they come to me, so my journal is always with me for just that purpose.

Over the next several posts, I plan to discuss my journal, the mechanics of how I make it work for me, and why I think a journal is an important tool for making your ideas clear. Tentatively I plan to split the discussion as follows:

• Journal Mechanics - how I make my journal work for me
• Journal Tools - notebooks, pens, and other tools I find useful in journaling
• Alternate Journal Formats - keeping it on your computer, online, in your day planner, or in other ways that are convenient for you
• The Journal Process - my journaling is integrated into a daily process I’ve tried to make into a habit so it happens automatically
• Practical Journaling - ways to use a journal
• Thoughts on Journaling - other thoughts about journaling and its benefits

Categories: Practical Applications, The Basics, Tools
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One of the hardest times to make your ideas clear for any technical presenter is when you’re in front of an audience of executives. You probably have an audience composed mostly of people who came up through sales, marketing, or customer service. There’s probably also a finance geek as well. With luck, there will be at least one person with a technical background, but don’t count on it! Even if there is someone with technical experience, it’s probably out of date. So what can you do?

As part of a book I’m writing on making your ideas clear, I drafted a sample chapter about speaking to senior audiences where I’ve collected all of the stuff I’ve found useful. It starts with knowing just what your audience is REALLY interested in. For most executives, the most important things are

• Money - the bottom line for most executives is are they making money?
• Strategy - much of what you do they would consider to be ‘tactical’. If you want to get their attention, tie what you’re talking about to their strategic concerns.

Executives also tend to be VERY direct communicators who think in bullet points. They don’t like long explanations and couldn’t care less about the background. In order to get your point across, you need to focus your presentation and reduce it to bullet points. A book I’ve found useful for insight is by Linda McAllister called “I wish I’d said that!”

If you read the book, you’ll probably recognize most executives you know as ‘Noble’ communicators (communicate in bullet points) and many technical presenters you know as ‘Socratic’ communicators (like to explain things). I’m Socratic myself. The book has specific suggestions on how a person from one type should talk to a person of another type. I recommend the book.

You should also understand that no one makes it to the executive level without being a politician (unless they started the company and it’s still small). In any large organization (100 people or over), politics will be under the surface of almost everything. You need to keep out of it yourself, but you need to be aware of it and know where you might be stepping on political toes.

To read more about presenting to Senior Executives, read my write-up called ‘Presenting to Senior Audiences‘.

Categories: Practical Applications
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If you are, then you should learn from the best. I was looking over a search today and found a blog entry at hackademia.net called “Good writing makes the difference” which pointed me a Computerworld article by John Brandon on “The top 10 best-written blogs“. I’m looking at each blog to learn how to make my own blogging better.

Reading Brandon’s article lead me to his blog about the characteristics of a good blog (”What makes a blog worthwhile?“). The keys are:

• Good writing
• Interesting points

The top-10 blog article added these points:

• Writing with humor and wit
• Thoughtful posts that are literate and worth reading
• Thoughtful and insightful writing
• A high plateau when issues are debated
• Using facts to engage you

All of these SOUND easy to do, but it takes practice to do them well. Humor and wit are more then just cracking jokes. They are finding a smile instead of a belly laugh in a situation by tying it to the human condition as others see it.

Remember too that if you’re looking for a job, your potential employer is looking for you online. They’re going to read what you write and evaluate you on what they see. Would you like to be considered in the company of the Top 10 when that evaluation is made?

Categories: Blogging, Practical Applications, Skills, The Basics
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Some employers have been asking for writing samples, and not just employers looking for writers. They want to know if you can communicate. You see it sometimes in job postings for technical jobs, particularly for team leaders and project managers.

A recent article I ran across How to Send Employers A Solid Writing Sample talks about this. As it points out, if you need to provide a writing sample, FIRST, ask the employer for guidelines. What are they looking for.

If you get guidelines, then stick to them. If you don’t get guidelines, the article suggests the following:

1. Less than 500 words
2. Be careful of confidentiality
3. Make it relevant to the job
4. Make it typo free

That last one is a particularly tough one in many things I’ve seen submitted for technical jobs. I’m no English teacher, in fact I never did all that good in English though I passed well enough. But it stops me cold when I run into mis-spellings, wrong spellings, and poor grammar. This is important in your resume and even more important if the employer is asking for a writing sample. They’re trying to gauge whether you can communicate and Get Your Point Across!

Categories: Practical Applications
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