After reading the article about retention of information and advanced organizers, I found that it made complete sense. The summarizing of it came in 1 key sentence, which ended the article. "This procedure would also render unnecessary much of the rote memorization to which students resort because they are required to learn the details of a discipline before having available a sufficient number of key subsuming concepts." The idea that these organizers and methods of teaching would end the need for rote memorization is exactly what I feel education needs. Memorization is only the repetition of facts and does not necessarily mean the students have learned anything.
After reviewing web pages that will assist with concept mapping, I found that Bubbl.us is a great way to create, print or export an organizer. It is a very easy to use organizer and does not take much time to get use to the methods to create with it. EducationOasis and Exploratree are also sites that can help one create a new organizer. What I especially like about these two sites is that the user can pick the organizer they need from a large list. They are even labeled in a way so the user can know what they want to do with their information and can easily pick a great organizer to accomplish their task.
Overall the use of organizers is a great way to put thoughts and ideas into an order in which it is understandable and reviewable after finishing and coming back to it another time. This is a great way to get information down and organize it. It is what is the most successful way for myself to organize thoughts and I am sure is the same way for many others.
Many of the things we learned in school were rote. You either knew them or you didn't. I think as jobs in our country continue to get more demanding of critical thinking and understanding we will help our students to have skills that we were not taught. Every generation is supposed to leave the next better off, and I think the exodus from rote learning is part of that.
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