Concept Maps

I'm a big fan of concept maps, which are a graphical way of organizing concepts. For a good example  of concept maps, see HyperPhysics, which is a popular web site that contains nicely organized information about Physics.

I decided that it would be useful to create concepts maps for the entire K-12 curriculum. This would allow teachers and students to survey the entire landscape of concepts from a high level and then drill down for more detail about any particular concept. It's also a logical place to organize related information; for example, the "black hole" concept would include links to presentations, articles, blogs, quizzes and webquests about black holes.

The first step in implementing this was to pick a state curriculum for, say, science, and manually enter all the concepts it mentions.

The next step is to hierarchically organize the concepts by subject, and then figure out a way to graphically navigate the resulting structure.

I spend the last week manually entering and partially organizing all the concepts in the California state science curriculum. There were at least 2,000 concepts, so it was a pretty lengthy task.

If you're interested in seeing how it's turning out, here are some links:

• The entire California state curriculum: http://www.edu20.org/curriculum/show_all/14986
• The concepts required by the CA life sciences curriculum, grades 9-12: http://www.edu20.org/curriculum/show/14902
• All life sciences concepts (not fully organized yet): http://www.edu20.org/concept?subject=15
• An individual concept from Astronomy: http://www.edu20.org/concept/show/18890

Please note that the concept system has not been fully integrated into the rest of the edu 2.0 system; it's a work in progress. Nevertheless, we think that concept maps will be one of the most important and powerful aspects of the system.

Soon we will have entered a few more state curricula; then it will be possible to compare curricula for missing concepts, ordering of concepts, and other interesting aspects. Similarly, it will be possible to track students as they learn and test against their state's curriculum requirements.

Comments

[-rg]

Considered hyperbolic graphs for the graphical navigation? They supposedly are good for navigating large datasets (like the links of the internet). An alternative approach removes the hyperbolic aspect but keeps the mesh of nodes. Like these guys http://www.visualthesaurus.com.

Whatever approach you use, I would recommend 2d, not 3d.