6.5 The Frank Emmert Revolution of Mind Mapping
Beyond CSI: Visual Presentation of Your Data
While a great step forward, a CSI- or scrap-book-style Mind Map still has a number of disadvantages:
- it gets very messy with large amounts of information (over 50 entries)
- small items get drowned out by large and colorful items
- it is not portable
- while individual items can easily be re-arranged, moving entire sections to a different place in the system is complicated
- the system is prone to damage by wind/draft, overzealous cleaning staff etc.
On the other hand, the visual organization helps us see new relationships between existing items and makes it easy to place new items in the logical spot where they belong. This, in turn, makes the development of an accurate background story (factual history and prior art) and of persuasive new arguments (analysis and conclusions) almost easy. What we need, therefore, is a system that retains the strength of a CSI-style Mind Map but also meets the needs of an academic writing Mind Map (less flashy, more data).
The following video explains how YOU can develop YOUR Mind Map for YOUR writing project, step by step. It also shows you what a finished Mind Map might look like.