Taking Notes

Brainstorming

Sifting and Organising Your Ideas

Making an outline

Print your map

Export to your wordprocessor

Make a presentation

Brainstorming is a way of trying to geting all your ideas about a topic down on paper as quickly as possible.

The key to successful brainstorming is to let everything come out -- don't worry if it sounds goofy or dumb, just put it down! There'll be plenty of time for editing later.

To brainstorm with FreeMind, you'll need knowledge of two keys, plus your imagination.

Pressing Enter adds another idea at the same level you currently are at.

Pressing Insert adds another idea as a subidea of the one you've currently selected.

(The imagination you'll have to supply yourself!)

Different people take notes in different ways. Whichever way you take notes, you should find FreeMind helpful.

One good way of using FreeMind is to add one node per book or article you read. Name the node a short version of the article title.

Then add your notes on the article as a node note. To insert a note, go to the View menu, and select "Show Note Window". You can then add your notes below.

Don't forget to take full references for all the quotations you use.

FreeMind can also do some clever things with web links and email addresses.

After you've done a bit of brainstorming, and have written all the ideas you can think of, it's time to start sorting your ideas out.

You may well find that you've surprised yourself in the brainstorming process, and that you've come up with ideas that you didn't think you believed. Well done if you've managed to surprise yourself!

The next thing to do is to take a step back and just look at the different ideas you've come up with. What central themes do you notice? Which ideas seem to be more fundamental, and which less important?

After you've looked at your map for a bit, it's time to start rearranging your ideas. You can either rearrage your ideas by dragging and dropping them, or with the cursor keys. (CTRL + UP and CTRL DOWN move an idea up or down; CTRL LEFT and CTRL RIGHT move it left or right)

The first think to do is to move all the ideas together that seem to belong together. Are there duplications? Could some ideas usefully be combined? Could some ideas be usefully split?

You should carry on sifting and organising till you feel that you know what the main point is that you want to make in the essay.

When you've done this, save a NEW copy of your map. We'll use this to make the outline of the argument for your essay. (It's a good idea to save a copy under a different name before you make major changes -- this way you can always go back.) To do this, go to File, and then Save As on the menu, and call the new one it something like "Essay_Outline v1".

Now you know what your main point is, you can write an outline of the argument of the essay.

The point of producing an outline is to work out how you will argue for your essay's main claim.

The first thing to do is to change the text of the central node to your main claim. (Tip: a quick way to go to the central node is to press Escape)

The next thing to do is to look at the material you've collected, and divide it into the following categories.

You should end up with something like this:

Taking account of objections

FreeMind currently exports much better to OpenOffice than to Microsoft Word. So if you don't yet have OpenOffice, it's well worth downloading it (it's free).

Once you've finished your outline, you're ready to export.

You should be aware of the difference that folding makes.

Export to OpenOffice by selecting File, then Export, then As OpenOffice Writer Document from the menu.

Note: FreeMind does not (yet) have a spell checker. So you'll probably want to spell check the document before you do anything else.

Once you've got your outline into OpenOffice, you can write the rest of the essay in your wordprocessor as normal.

FreeMind also provides a good way of outlining PowerPoint presentations.

You'll need OpenOffice again.

Follow the instructions above to export your outline to OpenOffice.

Once you have the outine in OpenOffice, select (from OpenOffice!) File, then Send to, then AutoAbstract to Presentation.

This automatically creates a PowerPoint presentation from your outline.

I've found that setting "Included Outline Levels" to 2, and "Subpoints per level" to 5 gives the best results.

(This advice doesn't tell you anything about how to use FreeMind, but it may help you get a better mark in your essay!)

Does my essay have a main claim?

Does my main claim provide a full answer the question that I have been asked?

Have I made it obvious what my main claim is?

Do I have an argument for my main claim?

Is my argument for my main claim sound?

Do I have an introduction which provides an overview of the structure of my argument?

What reasons might a reasonable person have for doubting my main claim?

Have I responded to these reasons for doubting my main claim in a convincing way?

Is there any material in my essay which might seem irrelevant to establishing my main point?

Have I fully acknowledged all my sources, and marked all quotations as quotations?

This map is intended to help someone who has to write an argumentative essay in a subject such as history or philosophy to write better essays with the help of FreeMind. Copyright for this map resides with the author. Released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence v.2.00. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/uk/ You are free: * to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work * to make derivative works Under the following conditions: * Attribution. You must give the original author credit. * Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a licence identical to this one. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the licence terms of this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author's moral rights.