Technology in the classroom is still in its infancy. For some teachers in District 27, this was the first time they had used a software program that was directly related to teaching practices and based on something that they were already using interactively in their classrooms. The software thus became a technology for learning, connected to the classroom and teaching experience and not a disconnected process of learning a new technology.

Within our educational systems, advancements in the use of technology must combine with the necessary advancements in school climate, instructional practices, and instructional leadership. It will be in these high functioning, well coordinated environments that our students will have the greatest opportunity to succeed. Thinking maps and Thinking Maps Software comprise a set of tools to integrate technology with pedagogy focused on higher order thinking with the potential to create positive, systemic change in education. The dynamic visual circuitry of thinking maps creates an overlap between the human brain and the technology of the computer. They provide a crossroads, a nexus between brain, mind, and machine for efficiently and effectively organizing, understanding, and communicating thinking within a classroom, across whole schools, and around the world.

Read the complete chapter in the book Student Successes With Thinking Maps^®. Key sections from the chapter Thinking Technology with excerpts above include:

• Brain, Mind and the Machine
• Wait! Hold on. What impact on education?
• The LoTi
• Technology for Thinking
• Elements of Thinking Maps Software
• From the Individual to the System in New York City
• Evolution

Watch the Quicktime video below from Video Journal's Visual Tools: From Graphic Organizers to Thinking Maps Series featuring David Hyerle. If you don't have Quicktime (the video clip below did not start up), you can download it for Windows or Macintosh which will also install a plug-in for your browser. Watch other clips online in other chapters, and learn more about the companion DVD to Student Successes With Thinking Maps^®.

Video clip courtesy of Video Journal. Find out more about this video series and other excellent education videos at the Video Journal website.

Daniel Cherry, M.Ed. currently directs the New Hampshire School Administrators Leading with Technology (NHSALT) as part of a Gates grant for the N.H. State Department of Education. He is a former elementary educator and technology coordinator.