David in Spain

A little bit of everything

Mind Mapping – A Tool for students in all types of learning situations.

Buzan's iMindMap

Seeing as a I used to be a teacher I have always had an interest in teaching, education, learning. I have a particular interest in the thinking processes and how the brain works. I have read a good bit on the subject and including ‘Emotional Intelligence’ by Daniel Goleman. There was another I read about that I can’t remember the name of right now but will update when it comes back to me which was along the lines of thinking processes and creativity with thinking. When I was in business I read a number of books which have some great ideas in about things like Neuro Linguistic Programming, and how to get the best out of yourself and the muscle in between the ears.


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Buzan's iMindMap

One of the area that interested me a huge amount was the book by Tony Buzan. In it was the story of a young guy that decided one day that he should be a A student and not a C level student. His teachers didn’t believe him and nearly laughed at him for his audacity, but he had made up his mind. Though working out what it was he needed to do from the business end, such as the product he would have to hand in to get the best marks, to the way that he would have to work on himself to be able to achieve what he wanted from his educational life.

Much of it comes down to attitude and the desire to do the best you can do. But there are also tools that you can use to enhance your own learning such as MindMaps and making your short term memory become long term memory. There are tricks that do work and when you know and understand what sort of a learner you are, such as how you best learn material, audibly, reading, visual like video or by doing, then you can design a system for yourself that will ensure the top marks in the tests and exams that you have to put yourself through.

Another of the reasons that I believe this is because of my own story. I was failing at the English class at school, in particular and in other classes too. I was given a talking to by the English teacher, Mrs Dawson and she turned my head around. I had to get a certain number of essays done in a short time or I would be on the educational scrap heap. I didn’t fancy being a van driver or a road sweeper, I knew I was better than that. My attitude changed beyond belief and weirdly I found I enjoyed doing the essays and being successful. I think I even did extra work.

Tony Buzan has a product that is really useful and every person in any form of learning or education should consider investing in themselves by buying and using it. It is the MindMap. You can of course just get a piece of paper and draw the mind maps with coloured pens and that’s great but these days the computer is the way forward. Better legibility, speed of creation of Mind Maps and extra tools all make it worthwhile to get your hands on a copy of the iMind Map. There is a trial version you can use to see if if is worth your while getting so there is no need to just take a chance, spending money before you know if it will suit you or not.

The software will work on Windows as well as on the Mac and is good for writers that want to explore some ideas, getting some ideas out in the open and also for a business project management tool. I am using it in my quest to learn to be a software programmer. There is such a huge body of information I have to learn that I need iMindMap to be able to learn faster and get up to speed.

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Learning Objective-C for Mac programming

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It is the sort of thing to make your head hurt in the brain region. I suppose it is always good to give the old noggin a bit of a workout though. I bought some books and I have been working my way though some examples of making applications, starting with some foundation type apps that you have to view the output in the console. These are to explain the basics of programming and when you have got some of that done you can move on to making some that have a GUI.

I have said before that when I tried to learn programming I hit the hump as it were – that moment when the book or tutor or whatever hits you with some stuff that is either not explained or os badly explained as far as a beginner is concerned, is seems that programmers forget what it is like to be an ordinary human being and have normal thinking processes. I have had a couple of moments like that this time with looking at the Apple developer website for a tutorial while the tutorials on the Cocoalab.com web site has been much easier in comparison. That one is called ‘Become an Xcoder’ It really is good in feed in the info in small baby sized chunks.

So I am starting to think that I really could become an Xcoder of Mac, iPad and iPhone applications. I do have a couple of ideas of applications I want to create in a niche market that has not yet been covered. I will not be making any tip calculators that’s for sure, seeing as every man and his dog has already made on of those. On the Apple site it went in to so much detail that it was bordering on unintelligible so I ended up copying in code that I had no idea where it came from, why it was there and what it was supposed to do. I am working on the basis that if I go through it a couple of times or more I will pick up things bit by bit, I will be able to understand more as I go along.

I have been following the book mostly but I think it is a good idea to get a different view and take on the process by looking in other sources, like the cocoalab site and the Apple developer site. I think if I has started with the Apple tutorials I might have given up already.

OK then so if it is so difficult then why am I banging my head against the brick wall? Seems to me that creating applications for the iPad and iPhone has been proved to be a way of earning a living and I want a part of the action. I know that maybe a lot of people have a head start already and it could be a while before I can come up with something that will be useful enough to have people willing to give me money for it. But hey I do have to start somewhere.