The focus of this section has been on encouraging you to gather evidence about what qualities, knowledge and skills you have already. This is an important first step, especially if it helps you to realise that you have more than perhaps you realised. It is also an important step as it starts to make the case that it is important to value your qualities, knowledge and skills. If you value them, it is far more likely that other people will value them too.
However, it is also important to maintain and develop what you have already. This section has suggested that involving other people is useful in order to use learning to achieve personal change. It is also possible to use other people ? both people we know and others whom we have not even met ? by reading about their ideas. This section has introduced you to some ideas from other people. Section 3 takes this a step further. Before concluding this section, we will build on the technique of mind mapping that you were introduced to in Section 1.
The big advantage of using mind maps is that they get us out of what can be habitual ways of thinking. Often thoughts can follow well-trodden lines. Mind mapping is a technique that has been developed by Tony Buzan (2006). It can help us to think more creatively and to come up with new and fresh ways of looking at things.
For this activity, we would like you to create a mind map called ‘My Section 2 evidence?. If you are uncertain about how to produce a mind map you should go back to the one you created in Section 1.
Let your mind flow freely around this focus.
Then review all the evidence-collecting activities that you have been asked to do in this section. It is important to do this with as little editing or pausing as possible. Try and develop your mind map as colourfully and imaginatively as possible as you add new ‘lines? to it.
When you have finished doing this you will have the first version of your mind map.
Go over it again to see if you want, or need, to change it in any way.Finally, make three brief comments about your map (this could be on the other side of the piece of paper).
This is almost the last activity in this section. It is intended to enable you to ‘capture? your qualities, knowledge and skills as well as introducing an idea (and a skill) which will be of value to you. The result of this activity should help you as you think back over what you have covered in this section. It should mean that you have been able to show, on a single piece of paper, what you have brought to the unit and what the unit has added for you.
Copyright © 2008 The Open University
