Mind Mapping is the process of visually depicting a central concept with a highly effective diagramming method illustrates thoughts, concepts, relationships, associations, and consequences all connected to a central hub representing the main idea. Mind maps show an idea in its totality. The branches and where they spring from the central hub are more or less arbitrary. The main goal being a complete visual representation of all facets contained within the main idea.

Mind Mapping is a useful technique that improves the way you take notes, and supports and enhances your creative problem solving. By using Mind Maps, you can quickly identify and understand the structure of a subject, and the way that pieces of information fit together, as well as recording the raw contained in normal note as mentioned in the following video.

                                            

This is a link to a web page that explains more deeply about the Mind Mapping:

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~charles57/Creative/Mindmap/

 

A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet.The goal of developing this model  is to bring the internet into classes by enforcing students to engage in colaborative work that creates a need for group's discussion and applying higher level of thinking.Also , it supports different types of student centered skills and they are social skills,thinking skills and meta-cognitive skills.All these skills achieved when the student go through the WebQuest phases , starting from introduction,  then tasks ,after that the process  then ending with evaluation and conclusion .But , the challenges that teacher should considered when she/he design a WebQuest is how to make it faster and easier for the learners and the teachers.

Before joining the BTC , I did not use a WebQuest  and even observed it during my teaching parctice week.It seems to me as a new technique that serve  my educational philosophy of preparing students for labor life with higher level of thinking that keeps pace with the technological development.

Here are some effective Web Quest sites that I really enjoid:
http://www.zunal.com/

http://getworksheets.com/samples/webquests/cells.html

http://www.lauriefowler.com/dinoshow.html

   

Inquiry based learning and cybersafety

Inquiry base learning is defined as seeking information by questioning. The process of inquiring begins with asking the students a question from real life problems then continue that process with gathering information and data by the students through applying different type of approaches such as critical thinking ,searching,  reflecting and integrating the collected information to be refined by the students. Activities in Inquiry approach are more student centered and that is essential for professional's achievements because it requires reflection and knowing " How" things can be solved , which is the backbone of professional growth and that is one of the new roles for schools in  21^st century learning. All these issues require a cyber safety role on what students searched for and that role comes from the teacher as a facilitator of the learning process.

Our students have a quite potential abilities of using technology for doing researches and in some schools as I observed the teachers trying to shift from the traditional learning style to the student centred style with applying some cyber safety roles on the content and communication but we still far of that due to the acceleration of the technological development comparing with what we own.