First World War Poetry Digital Archive

Mind Mapping

What are mindmaps?

Screenshot of a Mindmap

Mind maps are visual representations of words, ideas, tasks, or topics showing relationships between people, places, and objects, that can be manipulated on screen. For example, how did Siegfried Sassoon know Wilfred Owen? Who else did they both know? Mind maps provide an environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing this information in a graphical, non-linear manner, similar to a brainstorming approach.

How can I use mind maps?

There are many ways that you can use mind mapping to enrich and enhance teaching and learning.

  • To identify relationships between people, texts, events or other bits of information
  • To analyze and structure information
  • To produce and present information

Mind Mapping Software

Using mind mapping computer software has a number of benefits:

  • A mindmap can be collapsed or expanded quickly to increase or decrease the level of detail.
  • A mind map can be filtered to produce customised views.
  • Digital objects such as images, audio, film amd links can be embedded.
  • Mind maps can be converted to different forms of media e.g. html, jpg.

Examples

In the maps presented here we show relationships between the poets, and also poems and manuscripts. You can use the predesigned maps or create your own using the free mind-mapping software VUE. You must download the VUE software to use the interactive versions of the maps.

The Great War Poets: Connections

Image of Poets Connections mindmap

This mindmap helps students explore the relationships between the poets, how they were connected, and who they knew. An interactive version of the mindmap can be launched using the free Mindmapping software VUE, or viewed statically as an html page or jpeg/png image.

Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen

Image of Dulce et Decorum Est mindmap

In this mind map students are asked to arrange the manuscripts of Wilfred OWen's poem 'Dulce et Decorum Est' in the order they were written by dragging them. Student will need to look at the images and see if they can work out the changes, and the order they happened in.

When I'm Killed by Robert Graves

Image of When I'm killed mindmap

Here, students are asked to explore secondary source material then place two manuscript variants of Robert Graves' poem 'When I'm Killed' in the order they were written in.